Our Deepest Fear
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us." In a world overrun by walkers, a group of strangers becomes a family, fighting for humanity in a world that demands brutal pragmatism.
1. Prologue

**A.N.**: So this prologue is a snapshot into the future of the story. Anyone who's read my other stories knows I'm a massive fan of denial, and most of all of happy endings and keeping characters alive that I love. But considering the genre, I will put my OC through the mill a few times to make sure she's earned it, just like the rest of the group has.

So, my character was heavily inspired by Ree Dolly, Jennifer Lawrence's character in _The Winter's Bone_. Watch it. Ree's personality, and her uncle, really inspire where my character came from, what she went through early in her life, how that moulded her later on.

Does Baby Grimes/Shane _have_ to be a girl?

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**Our Deepest Fear**

_Prologue_

* * *

"I've been thinking about what Pony-Boy said." The voice was quiet, and young. She knew it instantly, and for a moment she didn't respond. He shouldn't have been out wanderin' by himself but that seemed to be his way – and his mama having conniptions every time she realised her son was missing. The sun threw his shadow across the glittering water. That oversized hat and the gun holstered at his hip, distorted on the water, made him look like some kind of character from a messed-up _Disney_ movie, but glancing up at him there was a grim set to his mouth now that hadn't been there even just a couple hours ago. There were tear-stains on his cheeks and he looked wan and pale, and he had his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jeans.

"What'd Pony-Boy say?"

"In that book you gave me, _The Outsiders_," he mumbled. Collis licked her lips, gazing out over the water as it rippled with tiny splashes glittering in the sunshine. It didn't seem real, that it could be so beautiful, so tranquil. Quietly, she recited,

"_Nature's first green is gold,__  
__Her hardest hue to hold.__  
__Her early leaf's a flower;__  
__But only so an hour.__  
__Then leaf subsides to leaf.__  
__So Eden sank to grief,__  
__So dawn goes down to day.__  
__Nothing gold can stay._"

Carl nodded quietly to himself. "That's what he said. I get what he means now."

"Do you?" she asked, glancing up at Carl. He had seen far too much, had experienced worse than she had ever had by the time she was his age, and he was maturing. But he was still a kid, and it was easy to overlook that. He could carry a gun all he wanted, wear his daddy's sheriff's hat, but he wasn't an adult yet. But he was learning to understand what was going on around him…

"He's talking about Sophia. '_Her early leaf's a flower_', that's Sophia," Carl said quietly. "And the gold, that's…pretty things, right? They don't last. Sophia was pretty. She was sweet."

Collis sighed heavily, nodding to herself. "Poems can mean lots of things, to ever'body. I got no idea what Robert Frost was thinkin' when he wrote it, but you're right… 'Nothin' gold can stay', he's talkin' 'bout innocence, least to my mind. Sophia…she was sweet, she was…too gentle. Despite everythin' she was still innocent. She's gone, but none of us will ever forget. She's changed us all too much."

For better or worse, they had all changed in the last few weeks. A few more drastically and noticeably than others; the changes in some were subtle, like low-burning coals working up heat and power, and subtle glimmers of fire could be seen occasionally. Others were a hellacious inferno she could see miles off, rushing closer, destroying everything in its path.

"I should've gone after her. I'd've kept her safe." The deep, world-weary sigh made her glance up at her little friend. She'd met him when he was quiet and grieving his daddy, coming out of his shell with Shane and behaving real good for his mama while the world around him turned to shit. Sweet kid, good instincts.

"I don't doubt that," she said honestly. He may be young, and he didn't even know how young he was, but Carl Grimes was growing up into a kid who was kind, courageous and conscientious. Sophia's fate would always haunt him. "Didn't work out that way, though. Does nobody any good dwellin' on it."

"How do I stop?"

"I'll let you know when I figure it out." She sighed, watching the water, then glanced up at Carl. "Did you like the book?" For the first time, a ghost of a smile flickered across Carl's pale face.

"They didn't have to eat squirrels… I miss bologna sandwiches." Collis smiled sadly.

"My brother used to have bologna and grape-jelly sandwiches," she said wistfully. Carl crinkled his nose.

"Ew!"

"Yeah, ew," she agreed, still smiling sadly, despite the pang that shot through her chest. "But he loved it. Ever' day in his lunchbox, when he was your age, grape-jelly and bologna sandwich, plain potato-chips, and tomatoes. And he'd trade our cousin's cigarettes for candy-bars and Cheetos."

"He traded cigarettes? When he was my age?"

"He was enterprisin'. Good kid, though," she said, squinting at Carl behind her shades. She gave him a tiny smile, knocking the rim of his hat with her fingertips so that he smiled, reaching up to grab it before it could fall off his head into the water. "Go back to your mama, 'fore she has a conniption."

"'Kay," Carl smiled, and he startled her, flinging his arms around her shoulders suddenly, before darting off back toward the camp under the trees. She turned back to the water, glittering away, and pinched her eyes, her throat burning.

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**A.N.**: Just a snapshot. The first chapter goes back to the beginning.


	2. Guts

**A.N.**: So I have some ideas planned for Collis, her role in the group, and a few surprises I'd like to slip in to the story, because what's the point of writing if you're not going to make the story your own? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story, my characters, the plot.

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**Our Deepest Fear**

_01_

_Guts_

* * *

"Well, this is creepy."

Several of the others jumped, the urges to fight or flee overpowering each other as they raised their weapons and clutched their pounding hearts. Glenn let out a great sigh, sagging with relief as he glanced over his shoulder, and Rick followed his gaze, frowning at the young woman who'd come strolling into the laboratory idly swinging a grapple-hook from her hand. A plain black cap and sleek, athletic shades concealed half her face, she was dressed in multi-pocket black cargo-pants and Rick could easily identify a gun and several knives sheathed at her hips. He even spied a small hatchet, and strapped to her back, buckled across her torso, was an army pack that had to weigh twice what she did. She was leaning in the doorway, head cocked to one side, fiddling idly with that grapple-hook, and appeared to be chewing something.

"Collis!" Glenn half-laughed, unable to disguise his relief.

"How'd you get in here?" Morales asked, his eyes widening in sudden horror. This Collis woman lifted a thumb over her shoulder.

"Door," she said. She tilted her head at the group, all dressed in lab-coats and face-shields, the corpse on the ground between them. "What's with the _Mad Scientist_ getup?"

"How'd you get past the geeks?" T-Dog asked, staring.

"Feedin' frenzy out there provided an opportune distraction," she answered, in a slow, pleasing cadence. Her accent wasn't Georgia, but she was still from the South. It seemed she was looking at Rick, because when she spoke again her words implicated him. "Shame about your horse. Beautiful animal."

"Wasn't mine," Rick said quietly, but he felt horrible. No creature should have to die like that, though he knew it was nature's way that most animals did.

"Still," the young woman said softly.

"Can we get out the same way you got in?"

"Feel like playin' Indiana Jones?" she asked, indicating her grapple-hook.

"I don't think so," Jacqui sighed.

"So what's this?"

"We need to get out the city," Rick said quietly. "Got a plan but…it's messy. Need to sneak past the walkers to get to the construction-site across the way. There's vans over there. Keys onsite."

"And the axe?"

"We need the innards to disguise our scents," Rick said, and the young woman's face was impassive as she stared, or at least, he figured she was. Those glasses and the bill of her cap concealed half her face, and she just slowly chewed something very subtly.

"You're gon' hack up a human-being?" she asked quietly, but there was nothing accusatory in her tone. Rick already didn't like what they were going to have to do. With a sigh, the young woman undid the buckles clasping her pack to her back and set it on the floor, sturdy enough it didn't overbalance as she strode forward. "Least let 'im have some dignity in death. Morales, keep that fire-axe handy. Only got the one at camp, it'll do more good'n a baseball-bat."

"What're you gonna do?" Morales asked her nervously, as the woman squatted down, removing her sunglasses from her eyes and placing them over her cap. She frowned down at the corpse, glanced around and found a box of blue latex gloves, snapping on a pair. She unsheathed a wicked black hunting KA-BAR at her hip, and Rick grimaced, feeling his empty stomach churn as he watched her carve into the dead man as if he were a buck.

Rick had never been hunting in his life, he'd never even caught a fish on a line, but even he could recognise she had a lot of skill with this, precision. And a very strong stomach. The others all grimaced and made sounds of disgust as they gagged, but he watched her face, stoic and focused, methodically disembowelling the corpse.

"I am so gonna hurl," Glenn groaned, hands on his knees.

"Later," Rick said, glancing at him as he tried to stomach this entire thing himself. It had been necessity, their only way out, but watching the young-woman dressing the dead man like he was a deer made him thankful she'd arrived when she had, and he hadn't had to hack up the poor guy with a fire-axe.

"Anybody precious about the liver?" she asked finally, holding up a dark organ. Glenn gagged, struggling, and Rick swore he saw her lips twitch as she put the liver back in amongst the intestines. "Alright, start finger-paintin'."

"Everybody got gloves?" Rick asked, frowning around. "Don't get any on your skin or in your eyes." She stripped off the gloves and tossed them in a labelled trashcan, and Rick noticed her circling the lab slowly, touching something here and there, checking cupboards, stockpiling a collection of goods on a countertop, as the others smeared gore all over him and Glenn.

"Oh, this is bad. This is really bad," Glenn whimpered.

"Just think of somethin' else," Rick advised, as Jacqui and T-Dog smeared guts all over his white lab-coat. "Puppies and kittens."

"Mm, _dead_ puppies and kittens," T-Dog grunted, and Glenn turned and hurled all over the floor with that characteristic wet splattering sound that took Rick back to the last time Carl had had the flu. Projectile vomiting and he'd spent the night dozing on the bathroom floor with him, strung out and exhausted from a double-shift because Lori had had to stay with her mom after a hip-replacement.

"That is just evil, what is wrong with you?"

"Next time, let the cracker beat his ass!" Jacqui said, frowning at T-Dog.

"I'm sorry, man," T-Dog rumbled, grimacing as he pulled another handful of intestines out.

"You _suck_!" Glenn gasped.

"Do we smell like them?" Rick asked, fighting the urge to shudder and strip off the coat.

"Oh, yeah," the young-woman said from the other side of the room, where she was going through large, labelled brown bottles from a cardboard-box.

"Glenn," Andrea said, reaching for her gun. "Just in case." She pulled the gut-soaked coat aside to secure her sleek handgun at Glenn's waist.

"What about Merle Dixon?" Rick sighed, pulling the tiny key from his pocket, and tossed it to T-Dog, who didn't look thrilled but nodded slightly and pocketed it.

"Merle high again?" the young-woman with the red hair asked, and Rick glanced over at her. She looked _very_ disapproving, but not at all surprised.

"We'll deal with him later," Rick said, glancing at the young-woman. "Y'all need to be read if we get back. All your things, y'all might be jumpin' into a movin' vehicle. I don't want anyone bein' left behind."

"Hey," the young-woman said quietly, approaching him. Her eyes flitted to Glenn. "If one comes at you in the alley, take off its arms. Its jaw if you can do it; neutralises 'em. Can't bite, can't scratch, but it'll camouflage you from the others."

"That works?"

"How d'you think I stroll around the city?" There was a tiny smile at the corner of her lips, but a frown replaced it so quickly, Rick wondered if he'd imagined it. In an undertone, she said, "Take care of little-brother." Rick glanced at Glenn, who was grimacing and pale-faced as Jacqui finished getting him ready.

"I will," he said quietly, though he frowned as she wandered away, back to those cardboard-boxes. She had cut off the arms and jaw of a walker to conceal herself? How had she done that – who would ever have _thought_ of doing that? To stomach doing that to something that had once been human? But then he remembered how she'd disembowelled the corpse on the floor. A hunter. The way she held herself, her clothing, even just the tight, uncompromising bun she twisted her glowing hair into, implicated military training. He guessed there was a lot more to her than met the eye.

"Good luck," Morales said quietly, passing him the fire-axe. "You must be crazy."

"Must be," Rick agreed. If this wasn't some coma-dream, he had definitely woken but lost his mind. How could this be real? How could he be wandering through the streets of Atlanta draped in a dead man's hand and foot, covered in his viscera, disguised from reanimated corpses that ate the living. Everything was good, he'd never been more on edge – _ever _– well, excluding his wedding-day – and they were doing it, getting past the walkers with them being none the wiser. The yard was in sight, the fence would need scaling but he figured walkers couldn't get over it, Glenn had his walkie to get the others into position when they were ready to go – and the thunder clapping overhead warned them what was going to start happening.

A cloudburst. The hot droplets splashed their bare arms and quickly soaked their thin clothing, at the same time giving them huge relief from the intense sun but filling them with dread as Morales kept the borrowed binoculars focused on their boys down in the street. The darkening sky made it temporarily appear as if night had fallen early, and visibility was shot as they peered down, squinting in the rain.

"It's just a cloudburst. We get 'em all the time," Morales said, but his voice was shaking and panicked as he felt. This had to work – he couldn't watch Glenn be torn apart by geeks, not when he'd volunteered to go, when he'd volunteered every time, and they'd all taken it for granted the risk he took. "It'll pass real quick."

"Not quick enough," Collis said softly. Morales glanced at her. He didn't know how, but she had his kids wrapped around her finger, they absolutely adored her; she was great with the children at the camp, but she made most of the adults nervous. Too detached, almost bored. He'd seen glimpses of human emotion pass across her face, and now she was squinting down at Glenn biting her lip. They usually came to the city together, coming back with unusual hauls; Glenn knew the city, but Collis knew what to look for once they were there. She'd found coolant for the RV, catering-sized tins of tomato sauce, a sack of cornmeal, instant coffee, and in a moment of what had been at the time very uncharacteristic sweetness, had produced a yoyo and Legos and a doll and glittery stickers for his children, books and little accessories for Sophia Peletier and comic-books and a baseball mitt for Carl.

"How'd you know about the geeks? Their arms, jaws?" Morales asked, eyes still glued to the borrowed binoculars. It unnerved her, how casually she'd told Rick about cutting off a geek's arms and jaw, but he and the other parents at camp knew, if their kids were with Collis, they were safe. She was cold and brutal when it came to geeks and like Daryl Dixon, hunting was in her blood. She didn't throw her weight around at camp, but if something needed doing, they knew they could ask her and she wouldn't complain, no matter how dangerous or mundane the task was. T-Dog liked her for that, had recognised in her a selfless if freaking terrifying soul, and he'd been surprised she'd never, not once, ever even gone to church. Morales appreciated how she seemed to always know when the kids were on the verge of driving their parents crazy, and took them off his hands to teach them how to set snares for rabbits and hook a fish in the quarry, or work on their numbers and math skills teaching them card-games in the evenings, making it a sweet deal with scavenged _Fruit_ _Gushers_ and sunflower-seeds.

"Experience," Collis said quietly, still frowning down at the street. Morales glanced at her; she had her shades on and had strapped that enormous military pack over her back again, ever the soldier ready to mobilise with a second's notice when Rick and Glenn got to that truck.

"That's your secret to getting 'round the city?" Morales asked.

"One of 'em," Collis said, turning a wry smile on him. If Glenn was the go-to guy for stealth operations into the city, Collis was his female counterpart, the expert scavenger. "That them over the fence?"

"Yeah," Morales said, hope swelling. "They made it. They're in." Morales glanced up as the rain petered off, then stopped entirely, leaving them all soaked and sticky with eyes glued to that construction-site. All the walkers from that block and several around had crowded the chain-link gate, jamming up against it, Rick and Glenn had no chance. And they didn't try to beat the odds – even from here they could hear the tyres squealing, as they drove away…

"They're leaving."

"No, no, no, no," Jacqui gasped.

"They're leaving us," Andrea whispered, shocked.

"C'mon, get your stuff," Collis said. "Get ready to mobilise."

"They're _leaving_," Andrea enunciated. "No, no, come back!"

"They're gon' have to circle 'round," Collis said, her tone almost bored. She picked up the huge black case she'd acquired during her solo excursion this morning, before they'd all met back up at the department store to touch base before she and Glenn had gone out again. Morales hadn't opened the case, too busy scavenging what he could for his family from the store, but he was curious; she'd buckled a cylindrical object to her pack that could've held tennis-balls – or eyeballs collected from geeks – for all he knew, and she had a few more backpacks draped over her arms and a small Igloo in one hand.

The walkie crackled suddenly, Glenn's voice issuing from it as a loud siren echoed through the deserted street. "_Those roll-up doors at the front of the store, facing the street! Meet us there and be ready!_"

"Did he say –"

"The delivery-bay!"

"Come on, come on, let's go!" Morales' only thought was his babies, getting back to his wife – he grabbed the backpacks he'd filled and dashed away, Collis on his heels, Jacqui and Andrea carrying their share of her haul; Collis overtook him on the stairs, taking them three at a time, leading the way, opening the doors with her wickedest knife ready just in case, dashing through the front of the store where the geeks were groaning and shrieking and hammering against the glass; she loaded up her stuff onto Morales, hands already on the chain to pull the door up.

"Don't – get ready to climb into that van!" Collis said sharply, when Morales and Jacqui and Andrea all went to grab hold of the chain, panicked, dread curdling in their stomachs that they'd miss their opportunity for escape, or get caught by geeks in the attempt. As soon as they heard someone banging on the metal from the outside, she moved so quick Morales realised they'd only been in her way, hauling the door up, Rick waiting on other side, helping to load everything into the van he'd reversed in.

"Rick! Go!" Morales shouted, holding on as Rick stomped on the gas, Collis launching herself into the van in a practiced move just at the last minute, kicking a geek in the face rather than waste a bullet or lose one of her knives. He pulled the door down, shielding them all from the geeks, and from the sun, and collapsed against the wall of the van, sliding down, exhausted and light-headed, delirious with relief at their success.

For a moment, no-one spoke. The atmosphere inside the van was that of shocked disbelief at their escape, pumped up on adrenaline and so exhausted by the near-misses and how shitty a turn their day had taken, how gruesome and electrifying, but ultimately, he hadn't felt this alive in ages. They were all catching their breath, hearts returning to normal, eyes adjusting to the dim light inside the van, and realising with a hollow dread, that Merle Dixon wasn't among them. He glanced at Andrea, Jacqui, wondering if he was tucked in the corner past them; T-Dog was clutching a backpack and gasping for breath; Collis had her knee cocked, shades back in place, a worn paperback novel open in her lap. He had no idea how she did that. She was always reading at camp, whenever she had a spare five minutes. He knew Daryl teased her about it, but Morales' daughter had started picking up some of the books Collis had brought back to camp for her, seeing the example Collis set.

They all noticed Merle's absence – hard not to, he had a way of using up all the oxygen – and glanced at T-Dog, who'd gone back for him when they'd all run. Upset, self-disgusted, T-Dog admitted, "I dropped the damn key!"

Without looking up from her book, Collis said quietly, "And Dale's tools." Morales glanced around at the floor of the van, because that was true. They'd promised Dale to bring his tools back; they were gonna get it from him, if Daryl didn't beat him to it. Morales only hoped Daryl was still on his hunt, long enough they could discuss leaving Merle behind with Shane and the others. "I wouldn't worry."

"We left Merle chained up on that rooftop," Andrea said, looking alarmed, as Collis turned the page. "No guns, no water even. He's not my favourite person by a long shot, but…even if he deserves that, it wasn't right."

"I'm bettin' Merle Dixon's been in more scrapes'n this," Collis said, still reading her book, sounding bored. "If he can reach those tools, he'll find a way to get out. Boy was raised right for survivin'."

"Where's Glenn?" Andrea asked, and for the first time since they'd met, Morales saw Rick Grimes smile.

"He got a hot ride outta the city," was all he said.

"Best not to dwell on it," Morales sighed, suddenly realising how exhausted he was as he sank into the cushioned passenger-seat, and Rick glanced at him. "Merle gettin' left behind. Nobody's gonna be sad he didn't come back. Except, maybe Daryl."

"Daryl?"

"His brother," Morales sighed heavily. A flashy red Mustang sped past the van, and Rick swore he could hear Glenn whooping and shrieking with delight as he tore up the empty freeway. "At least someone's having a good day." He kept a sharp eye on the fuel gauge as the others coaxed him to drive a little faster; they couldn't match Glenn having the time of his life tearing up the empty roads in a stolen Mustang but the others wanted to reach camp before dark, and they were already later getting back than they'd promised their loved-ones.

The thought of their families waiting made Rick's stomach clench with anxiety about his own; he'd been so consumed with the task at hand, getting these people out of the city back to their own camp, that he'd temporarily been able to forget the enormity of the situation, the apocalypse, that he was searching for a needle in a haystack, looking for his wife and son in a world turned upside-down. He was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to find Lori and Carl and never let them go, ever. But if these people could offer him just a little shelter while he figured out his next move, he didn't know how he'd be able to repay them. All this they'd gone through today, that was on him; he should've known better than to use his gun, when he and Duane had been trapped inside because Morgan had used his gun to save Rick's life. Noise attracted them, wasn't that one of the first things Rick had learned about the walkers?

"Where're we headed?"

"There's an abandoned rock-quarry outside the city," Morales yawned. He couldn't believe how early it was, and yet it had been the longest day in a great long while. For all Dale's efforts to keep his watch wound, time seemed to have stood still back at camp. Morales had no idea what day it was, even. All he knew was they'd said they'd be back before three p.m. and Jacqui's watch said it was nearly six o'clock. Considering how manic everything had been, pure energy racing through their veins, Morales couldn't believe it had taken them so long to get out of the city. But as he directed Rick up through the mountain roads off the highway, to the abandoned quarry where they'd created a safe haven, where they'd never encountered a single geek, the sun beat lower, and he found himself wondering…the days were getting longer. The sun was shining low but it was still far above the horizon. They were coming into true spring, the days lasting longer. That was a good thing, for keeping watch, the watchmen had more light, but it might also mean they all stayed awake longer, were more tired, weren't as sharp. And the heat was already pressing on them. They'd all sweated through their shirts and that short cloudburst had done a lot to relieve them but it wasn't enough; and it was only going to get hotter. But then it would be winter. He didn't know which he dreaded most.

Morales directed him to a narrow path that he would've overlooked that led right into the heart of a camp. Glenn's stolen Mustang stood out like a sore thumb amongst the greenery; he parked up behind a minivan that belonged to a Lutheran church, finally killing the engine. He'd overdone it, he knew it. He'd woken up from a coma days ago, and a headache was hammering at his temples.

"Come meet everyone," Morales said, with a weary smile. All Rick wanted to do was fall onto a bed and pass out for a few weeks – strange thought from a guy who'd lost maybe months to a coma. The others were clambering out of the back of the van, he watched Andrea throw herself at a young blonde girl in white jeans who could only be the mermaid-loving sister she'd told him about earlier, and it didn't take long for Morales' wife and little children to swarm him, shouting for him, grins splashed across their faces, and he couldn't stop a slight smile at the sight. If he couldn't find Carl and Lori at least he'd helped one man get back to his family, Andrea to the little-sister who really was younger than Rick had expected. She couldn't be out of college yet, and a bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt with a hunting rifle over his back greeted T-Dog and Jacqui with warm smiles.

"Hey, helicopter-boy, come meet everyone!" Morales called, and Rick stepped forward uncertainly.

And there he was.

His heart hammered in his throat, his eyes burned and Rick did a stammer-step toward the little boy racing toward him with a scream. It was Carl. His little boy. His son, running towards him with tear-stained flushed cheeks, and behind him, a white-faced Lori looking like she was seeing a ghost.

How was this possible?

Against all the odds… And there was Shane, stunned and smiling as Rick hugged his family so close.

Collis dropped off the back of the van, stretched out with a sigh, and grabbed the things she had collected from the city. No-one rushed to meet her, there was no gaggle of relatives or anyone to gasp with relief at the sight of her return, and as she sat on her little cot, removing her cap and sunglasses, exhaustion and heartache pressing on her like the humidity, she rubbed her face and stared bleakly around the tent that seemed far too large. She groaned as she unlaced and pulled off her boots, undid her belt, and tucked her gun under her pillow, eyeing her haul, listening to the excited chatter of the others recounting their story to the group, Amy's relief and excitement at her sister's return, little Carl telling his dad how many knots Shane had taught him how to make. Inside the glowing tent Collis sat, and listened, and stared around the tent, the reminder of her loneliness stark.

Her entire body ached after the strain of slipping through the city, the exertion at the department store, and after stripping off her socks she curled up on her side, hand clasped under the pillow around her gun, and stared at the wall of the tent, listening to the others enjoying themselves, aching. At her waist she unzipped the concealed money belt that she never kept money in – since her first tour, a Ziploc baggie contained the photographs she couldn't stand to ever lose. They were all she had, now.

She had no-one left.

Slowly, reliving each and every heart-breaking memory, she went through the photographs, until the tent dimmed and suddenly, she was asleep.

"Where's Collis?" Dale asked, frowning around the group gathered around the campfire.

"I think I saw her head into her tent," Amy said, glancing over her shoulder at Collis' tent. Usually, of an evening, they could hear the kids' giggles as she kept them entertained while the adults prepared the meal and got on with other chores, but tonight the tent was dark. Dale frowned, sitting up a little straighter in his collapsible chair.

"Did she go out by herself?" Dale asked, glancing at Glenn. The two were the experts in getting back from Atlanta; he didn't know the details but he knew the two had worked out a system whenever they had to go into the city. Several times, Glenn had come back to camp without her; she'd turned up hours later, carrying twice her weight, having travelled on foot. Her KA-BAR machete would need cleaning but she'd say she'd done more during training.

"Twice," Glenn nodded, for a moment looking uncharacteristically solemn.

"Well, I'm glad she came back with you all this time," Dale sighed heavily. "She'll be able to handle Daryl when he gets back from his hunt."

"That girl can handle anything," T-Dog said with certainty, and Glenn nodded.

"I don't like her going out by herself," Dale sighed, frowning into the flames.

"You can't stop her," Andrea said softly, and Amy smiled in the flickering firelight.

"I wouldn't dare," Dale half-chuckled. He frowned, troubled. Collis risked everything, frequently, and he had never once heard her ask for anything in return. She more than pulled her weight, demanding so little from the camp but always there to help, or listen, if someone needed it. But she was alone; he had no idea who her family was, if she had any, if she had lost people. And he didn't dare ask, but he wondered, and worried. The only person at camp she really seemed close to was Daryl, and even then they acted like teenagers, butting heads and annoying each other; it was quite sweet to watch them arguing about the best way to cook squirrels and what it meant that Collis read _books_, even listening to their gruff banter as they shared the same clothesline. Beautiful and disciplined Collis, with her vivid hair and clean, freckled face, and filthy Daryl with his squirrels and crossbow and reluctant desire to ingratiate himself with the group, never returning to camp without enough food for everyone.

"I don't think she realises how vital she is around here," Dale said quietly, contemplating the flames, Amy, thinking about Daryl. Collis was a vital member of the group, whether she realised it or whether they acknowledged it, and in his way Daryl contributed more than most by bringing back his kills. "Maybe she doesn't want to."

"Why wouldn't she?" Andrea frowned.

Dale shrugged, not wanting to put into words his fear that Collis had reached her limit; there was only so much pain a person could take. He wondered with a great swell of regret, just who she had lost. The way she was with the children showed who Collis really was, she couldn't conceal her goodness where they were concerned.

* * *

**A.N.**: I wanted to give an indication of what others think of my character before I switch to her perspective, to show her place in the group. There will be a few surprises in the coming chapters, I always make a story my own by "correcting" what I want to happen (I haven't even approached writing a _Game of Thrones_ one yet, there is just too much to do!)


	3. Squirrels

**A.N.**: I just…I _don't_ like Shane!

* * *

**Our Deepest Fear**

_02_

_Squirrels_

* * *

Amy tied her hair back into a half up-do as she climbed out of the tent, already sweaty thought it was early-morning. They'd started to get up as soon as the sun had risen, and that wasn't normal for her; mornings were a memory from her childhood. She was in college now, though, and if she was up at six a.m. the party had gone on _waaaay_ too long after finals had ended. An eight a.m. class was murder, when she was going to bed at three a.m. working through essays.

There were no more classes, though, no socials, no concerts in the city, parties, no meeting friends for _Starbucks_ and taking part in the year-long scavenger hunt, no setting aside an hour a night to watch her favourite TV-shows with her roommates as they sighed over Bellamy and Damon and judged the Kardashians, drooling over _Food Network_ shows while they were woefully hung-over eating their way through jumbo bags of _Lay's_. Everything was gone. The world had gone to hell while she and Andrea were on their road-trip, a vacation she'd been promising since Amy was fifteen. It was the first time Andrea had ever come through for her, after all the birthdays she'd spent secretly heartbroken that her big-sister didn't want to come to her party. She always sent gifts and cards, but Andrea was older and had already had her own life before Amy had even started kindergarten. They were twelve years apart and Dale had thought Andrea and Amy were mother-and-daughter. She guessed that came from Andrea being so much older, and _mature_. Whereas Amy was nearly twenty-four, still in college and…well, it _felt_ as if this was just another part of their road-trip, camping out with Dale and the others at the quarry. No walkers had come up the mountain, and with the sun and the cicadas it was sometimes easy to forget.

Time had stopped, but it was weird: they knew something awful and unexplainable had happened but at camp, they hadn't been touched by it. So was it real? But she knew time was passing, and she smiled as she approached Collis, who had carried her overloaded military pack out of her tent, already surrounded by the little kids wanting to know if there was anything good stashed in Collis' magical military-pack. Hair-ties, a tub of _Bounce_, a leopard-print roll full of hair-styling scissors, an enormous pump bottle of salon-quality shampoo to keep them all going for months, packs of batteries, tube-socks, deodorant, sandwich-bags, Q-Tips, nail-clippers, a few glossy math workbooks for Carl and Sophia, mouthwash, floss, a puzzle, packs of cute underwear for all the kids, a set of cute little training-bras for Sophia, who smiled bashfully and thanked Collis as her mother smiled on, hugging that box of laundry detergent.

"Ah, and for you," she said softly, as Amy approached, "a bottle of SPF 500 for fair Miss Amy." Amy scoffed in amusement and gratefully accepted the sunscreen. She didn't tan like Andrea did; she was fair-skinned and had always been, but she wondered how Collis, who was freckled and red-haired, could give up the sun-protection.

"What else have you got in there?" she asked curiously.

"What d'you need?" Collis said softly. "Toothpicks, a radiator-hose, some clothes, new pair of Docs. Powdered alum, aspirins, couple Zippos and some lighter-fluid, catering bag of pasta. Books, a jump-rope, oh, here's some embroidery-thread for you, Carol." She frowned into her pack. "I picked up some books for Sophia but they're at the bottom of the pack."

"Thank you," Carol smiled warmly. "That's very kind of you."

"Okay, _what_ is this?" Amy asked, lifting up a big _Ziploc_ baggie full of glittering gold things.

"Those…are empty rounds," Collis said, already digging through her pack again.

"Why d'you need empty ones?" Amy frowned.

"They can be re-used," Collis shrugged gently.

"Where'd you get 'em?" Shane asked, frowning, as he wandered over.

"Streets are full of 'em, just lying around," Collis sighed.

"And how d'you expect to use 'em?" Shane asked derisively. "They need _gunpowder_." Amy saw Collis still at the tone of Shane's voice – it was clear the two didn't get along, and Amy and Andrea had discussed how Shane's attitude toward the women in camp was to blame. He spoke to her now as if she was an idiot, and that rattled Amy, let alone Collis. Andrea would be fuming.

"I got a recipe," Collis said coolly, and Amy pursed her lips, trying not to smirk at Shane's expression. She knew Collis didn't like Shane – she called him "the law" with the kind of tone that implied she was usually on the wrong side of it.

"You got any bullets we can use?"

"Don't need more bullets, Shane, need more people trained for hand-to-hand," Collis said gently. It was their old argument; he relied heavily on that killing-machine gun he always carried around, bitched about how few shells he had left for it, not having the manpower or provisions to hold off an attack. And that was one of the areas of contention between Collis and Shane – he relied on _men_.

And yet Collis was a touring soldier who was more capable than any of the men in the group; she relied on knives and hatchets, the gun at her waist only for the very direst of situations.

"Hand-to-hand risks gettin' bit," Shane said, shifting that way he did when he was getting agitated and couldn't take anybody's input.

"Guns risk drawin' more walkers," Collis said quietly. "And like you keep bitchin', you're runnin' low on ammo. What're you gon' do when you're out?" Shane didn't know how to answer, and Amy could see that really pissed him off; he fidgeted where he stood, hitching the waist of his pants, shaking his head, he scoffed and strode off. Amy glanced at Collis, who was facing Shane and shaking her head slightly.

"So…these bullets aren't actually, like, useable?"

"They will be," Collis said, turning to her. "Long as there's people I'll be able to make gunpowder."

"Do I want to know what that means?" Amy asked, frowning. Collis shook her head.

"_No_." She laughed suddenly, and Amy grinned.

"So, um… Did you find any?" she asked awkwardly. Collis just looked at her for a minute, then gestured Amy toward her smaller tent. It was just Collis sleeping inside it, so it was roomier than most of the tents, even with the raised cot Amy wondered if she'd had out in Iraq. She'd never known a soldier, didn't really think about the War and what they'd gone through. Inside the tent it was glowing, and Collis unzipped her pack again, starting to arrange things on her cot. Amy was always amazed what Collis brought back, she seemed to know what people needed before they did.

"Alright, here it is," Collis said, producing a box of _Tampax_ that were now worth more than gold.

"Thank _god_," Amy sighed with relief, taking the box from her. Books, TV, no-one _ever_ showed how girls dealt with the monthly nightmare of their period when the world ended. When they couldn't run to the drugstore for supplies. _She_ sure hadn't – she'd been weirded out enough asking Andrea to stop at _Rite-Aid_ on their road-trip so she could buy tampons. She sighed, glancing at Collis. She was a soldier, tough; she'd been out to Afghanistan and Iraq, from what Amy understood. Her underwear was black hot-pants, her bras were expensive black sports-bras, supportive and easily washable. Suitable for an apocalypse, and for drying her laundry on a line with Daryl's vests.

And Amy wore white jeans and her underwear was all printed with unicorns and hearts, and she was embarrassed for people to see her panties. She was a girl who went to the dorm bathroom wrapped up in a robe and her pyjamas, and always changed out of her swimsuit in a stall, and blushed if a guy was in the laundry-room when she was moving her laundry from the washer to the dryer. She sighed. "Men have it _so_ easy, it's not even fair."

"They won't get the kind of rage we do to kill things," Collis said quietly, and Amy laughed. "I call that an advantage." Amy laughed.

"You know, I am so glad you got outta the city yesterday," she said honestly. "I'd've been mortified I got you killed over a box of tampons." Collis laughed.

"You and me both," she said, smiling. There were flashes of humour and…humanity in Collis when people least expected it; they'd all come to see her as detached and scary, but Amy didn't think she was, not really. Dale thought she'd been hurt bad by losing someone.

She guessed going overseas to fight had given Collis a distinct advantage in knowing what to pack for survival. She was the only one in camp with a full medical kit, pieced together ages before it was even needed by a nurse she knew, and was armed to the teeth with knives and hatchets. And books; she'd brought _books_. Amy and her sister had been caught outside the city when everything went to shit, or Amy would have been able to find the emergency kits her dad had insisted she take with her when she moved into the dorms a couple years ago. When Andrea said she was going into the city yesterday, Amy had wished they'd be able to get to the campus; she had extra clothes there and knew the goodies tucked away in her friends' dorm-rooms that would really help out the camp. Her chest ached, and she winced at the thought of her friends.

"So, did _you_ get anything cool from the city?" Amy asked. Collis was always bringing back stuff for other people, whether it was a catering bag of pasta or nail-clippers or a sleeping-bag. But looking around the inside of Collis' tent, it didn't look like she held onto much of what she brought back.

"I got some things," Collis shrugged. She picked up a can of root-beer and handed it to Amy, who gasped and clutched the warm can to her chest.

"It's a shame there's no ice-cream," she sighed. She had been craving a root-beer float for _weeks_. "I'd've split a float with you." Collis just smiled softly. "So what else have you got?" She packed up the things Collis had brought for her, watching Collis separate out the rest of her haul for different people. "So…what's in the case?" Collis glanced down at the floor, where a large black travel-case rested. She reached down and undid the clasps, and Amy frowned. "Okay, I have no idea what that is."

"It's a hunting bow," Collis smiled.

"Oh, like Daryl's?"

"Usin' one of these is harder. It's all _your_ strength, and skill," Collis said, eyeing the bow cradled in Styrofoam. "The crossbow is engineered to do most of the work. Only, don't tell Daryl I said that." Amy laughed.

"Does this mean you're gonna go out hunting with him?" she asked. Maybe that was their idea of dating? They were grumbly but sweet to each other, if Merle wasn't around, and Daryl tended to stay out of Collis' way if he was.

"I don't know. I don't think it'd be a good idea for the only two hunters to go out together; if we're bit, y'all are screwed," Collis mused. "But it does mean it isn't just Daryl goin' out for food all the time."

"I thought you hunted with a rifle."

"Nah. Had 'em for protection. Could never afford the bullets. Made 'em for other people, but I stuck with the bow," Collis said softly. She glanced up. "I was survivin' off the woods before Katniss was ever even a twinkle in Suzanne Collins' imagination." Amy smiled; she could believe that. Could barely believe the introverted soldier knew who Katniss Everdeen was, but she figured Collis hadn't been living under a rock.

"_Amy_!" Andrea's voice rang out, panicked, and Amy rolled her eyes, secretly pleased.

"You better go," Collis smirked slightly, but there was a sadness to her eyes that made Amy glance over her shoulder as she left the tent.

"You know, I used to wish we could spend more time together," Amy said, as she walked over to Andrea with her new pack, "but this is getting ridiculous."

"I didn't know where you were," Andrea said, eyeing the box and can in Amy's hands curiously. "What's that?"

"Just some things I asked Collis to get for me," she said, smiling.

"Help me hang up the laundry?"

"Is it laundry-day?"

"Carol started early with Rick's uniform," Andrea said, reaching for a plastic laundry basket full of clothes. "With that box of detergent Collis brought back we can give some things a good soak, get things scrubbed out properly. Might look as good as new."

"Bet you never thought you'd be scrubbing your designer khakis on a washboard in an abandoned quarry," Amy said gloomily.

"It wasn't exactly on my list of things to do during our road-trip," Andrea smiled.

"Collis brought a hunting-bow back from Atlanta," Amy said, as she grabbed the bag of clothes-pegs from the little 'utility-closet' in Dale's RV. "Remember she and Daryl were teasing each other about long-bows and crossbows, and how Daryl would break her thumbs if Collis tried to use his Norton?" Andrea chuckled.

"I remember," she nodded. Those two were funny – Collis was a quiet girl but Daryl Dixon seemed to know each of her buttons and delighted in winding her up; and when she was irritated by him, her accent got thicker, sounding more like she could've been Daryl and Merle's next-door neighbour growing up. Between the three of them, though, Andrea would've bet on Collis being the biggest badass. "I remember Collis saying how she'd have to have no thumbs to fall back on using a crossbow to hunt."

"They're so cute," Amy giggled. "Their kids would probably come out of the womb with a bow and hunting-knife in each hand."

"Skinning squirrels and reading Tolstoy," Andrea chuckled, then she frowned, watching across the camp as Collis tried to beat the record with the glittery pink hula-hoop they had found in Dale's RV storage, Sophia and Mariana giggling around her. "She can do much better."

"I don't know," Amy said, pegging up some socks. "Okay, these need darning… D'you know how to darn?"

"Might have to ask Carol to teach us," Andrea sighed, smiling.

"So, I think Daryl's like…at least it was _him_ we're stuck with, y'know. I like him much better than Merle," Amy said, crinkling her nose, and Andrea nodded. "And he's not so bad, you know – he started bringing food back to camp without anyone asking… And if all I had was you growing up, I'd be a totally different person." Andrea glanced at her, thinking that over.

"Yeah, you wouldn't be such a pain in my ass," Andrea smirked.

"No, I'd be an even bigger one, with only you as a role-model," Amy said teasingly, sticking her tongue out, and Andrea tried to whip her with a wet t-shirt. "Hey, so, I was thinking. Collis said only she and Daryl are hunters, which is true, and they do keep going out for food for the rest of us."

"And we do their laundry, what's your point?" Andrea frowned.

"They do their own laundry," Amy said, glancing at Andrea. She laughed, remembering Daryl and Collis tease each other – when Carol had offered to launder Daryl's clothes, Daryl had grunted he didn't want someone else's hands all over his panties; Carol had retorted they hadn't seen him hanging up any whatsoever on the line, and Collis had carried a book and an armful of laundry and said, "He doesn't wear any", making him drop his arrows when she'd pinched his ass as she'd strolled by. Collis was full of surprises like that – Amy would never have expected a disciplined, introverted person like Collis to be _flirty_. Especially toward _Daryl_. Andrea just gave her a smile.

"What were you thinking about?" she prompted.

"Well, Daryl's not back yet, and I'm sick of tinned beans and they're running low…and Dale has that fishing-gear," Amy said, glancing subtly at Andrea. "Maybe…we could take the canoe out?" Andrea smiled as she flicked out a t-shirt, adding it to the line.

"I think that'd be a great idea, I'm sure everyone would appreciate some fresh fish," she smiled encouragingly. "I don't think I can stand much more squirrel."

"Maybe the squirrel's not the problem, maybe Daryl should just let Collis use _her_ recipe for a change," Amy said, and Andrea chuckled. "Although, how do you develop a _summer_ and a _winter_ recipe for squirrel stew? They argue like Mom and Dad in the kitchen when they're skinning those squirrels, it's so cute." Amy laughed suddenly. "D'you reckon _Dad _would ever believe we've eaten squirrel?"

"Mom would pass out faint," Andrea chuckled. "Tell you what, though, I'm sure as hell cooking squirrel stew for Mom, after the _meatloaf_ she forced me to eat growing up."

"Daryl's squirrel stew is _waaay_ better than Mom's meatloaf," Amy laughed.

"That's not saying much," Andrea chuckled.

"Hard to believe three months ago I was vegetarian," Amy mused. Andrea laughed.

"You were in the process of breaking up with supermarket chicken-breasts and ground beef," she smirked slightly. "That doesn't make you a vegetarian, it makes you a conscientious consumer."

"You always have to argue the fine details – you're such a lawyer," Amy tutted, shaking her head, and Andrea smirked.

"It's too bad you didn't bring your books, you could've studied with the rest of the kids," she said, and Amy shot her a look. As the youngest adult in camp, if Collis didn't have such a magical way with the kids, they'd have probably crowded her. They had, a few times, and it was fun to teach them how to bait a hook to fish, even if they never caught anything, and in the late-afternoons while they were preparing dinner, sometimes T-Dog would hand out his do-rags and Daryl and Collis would bulk out the teams playing capture-the-flag in the small, flat clearing, just to tire the kids out so they'd eat and literally drop into their sleeping-bags. Half the time Amy thought Daryl only played because Collis held his arrows hostage until the game was over. But it was cute to see his surly face and pout whenever he was forced to play.

"Babies, come get your breakfast!" a voice called, and the children swarmed around Mrs Morales as she produced a small saucepan of what was probably oatmeal. Collis had found a 25lb sack of the stuff in the city and hauled it back to camp, and breakfast was their only guaranteed meal since. Relieved of the children, Collis meandered toward Glenn, who was watching sorrowfully on as Morales, Dale and Jim stripped the Mustang.

"Look at them. Vultures. Go on, strip it clean!" he called, disheartened.

"RV generators need all the fuel they can get, got no power without it," Dale said, hobbling past with a tank of gas siphoned from the Mustang. "Sorry, Glenn."

"Thought I'd get to drive it at least a few more days," Glenn mumbled.

"Don't worry, little-brother," Collis teased, lifting the bill of his cap slightly. "There'll be other cars."

"Yeah, lots of 'em," Rick nodded.

"Won't be like that one," Glenn mumbled, pouting adorably. It was like talking to a teenage-girl about her first breakup.

"Well, you'll just love 'em in a different way," Collis said, glancing at Rick, who grinned. Glenn sighed.

"I'm gonna go see if Carol needs me to bring anything up from the lake," he said gloomily.

"That's good, Glenn. Put yourself out there, get some new hobbies," Collis nodded, and Glenn rolled his eyes at her, ambling off toward Carol. She had no idea why Carol thought it necessary for survival that she pack an ironing-board, but considering what they all knew about Ed Peletier, being house-proud and carrying out her daily chores to perfection wasn't something Carol had a choice in. Collis adjusted her cap and glanced over at Carol, quietly using an old-fashioned iron to iron Rick's sheriff's uniform.

"Good morning," Rick said, smiling at her.

"Mornin'," Collis said quietly.

"So, uh… We didn't see you 'round the campfire last night… Carl showed me the baseball mitt you found for him," he said, eyes sparkling as he smiled. Yesterday he'd been all intensity, wound up so tight and on edge he might've snapped like a taut wire. But he'd handled intense pressure well and Collis respected what he'd done for the group. He was resourceful, kept a good head on his shoulders. He had earned the respect of the rest of the group just in a couple hours of knowing him. There was a reason he had that Sheriff's Deputy badge – hell, if he'd been the Deputy in her own county, she might've had even a shred of respect for the law when she was growing up.

"Carl's sweet," she said simply. "Listen… T-Dog told me, about Merle. The padlock."

"What about it?" Rick frowned slightly.

"Look, Merle Dixon's a lot of things, but his brother… He's rough 'round the edges but he's not his brother. He's a hunter. Great instincts, just never stood much of a chance. There's me and Daryl as far as hunters go. I've got a bow now but I can't watch my own back while I hunt, tryin' to feed all these people," she said, and Rick frowned. "We can't afford to lose Daryl because we left Merle behind."

"What're you saying?"

"Shane's law says we're not to go into the city without due cause. No unnecessary risk," Collis said, pursing her lips. She had no respect for Shane, knew the entire world could burn if he could make sure Lori and Carl were queen and prince of the ashes. For his best-friend's wife and son, Shane sure had a vested interest in their happiness – not just their safety; their safety would've been asking too much. _Happiness_, that went beyond doing right because he'd loved Lori's husband. "I already know there's not much you wouldn't risk to help a stranger. That's why I'm comin' to you; I can get into the city quiet, bring Merle back quick, if you're okay taking point controllin' him when I do."

Rick frowned, eyeing her thoughtfully. "I mean no disrespect, I hear you're a vet who's done tours in the Middle-East so I'd never question your capability… I'm not comfortable with you being the only one there to handle the fallout of Merle Dixon being uncuffed."

Collis smiled slightly. Shane looked at her and saw, like Merle Dixon did, a redhead _Barbie_ playing paratrooper. They looked at her and couldn't believe she was a lifelong hunter who'd grown up in bitter poverty in rural Ozark Mountains, with two unstable, unreliable parents and a string of awful events that had shaped her into the girl who'd packed a Ziploc of photographs, a bra and toothbrush and signed up to the Marine Corps for basic-training as soon as her siblings were old enough to take care of themselves. They couldn't perceive that Collis was tougher, more capable and deadlier than they were, that she might have the benefit of experience and could contribute; neither Shane nor Merle had much respect for women, but at least Merle was upfront about it. He laughed, hearing she was a Marine; but Shane was more passive-aggressive about his derision at a female soldier. She wondered if the county sheriff he and Rick worked for had been a woman who'd seen right through him.

"I appreciate you sayin' that," she said quietly.

"I hope you understand, I have a great respect for you, going out to the Middle-East, I know I sure as hell would've never been able to handle what goes on out there," Rick said, and Collis nodded, slamming shut the mental door that was always creaking open slowly, memories leaking out, threatening to overpower all her other senses. "It's got nothin' to do with you bein' smaller than he is, I saw how you were with that knife yesterday, I'm guessin' you'd have no qualms about usin' it if someone came at you, living or dead. But I cuffed him. My responsibility to take that heat when we cut him loose."

"Well, you might talk to your partner about headin' back to the city with me," Collis said. "He likes to think he's in control, does Shane." Her disapproval dripped from her voice, and Rick did a double-take, frowning thoughtfully.

"I gotta talk to some other people about it first," Rick said, with a pointed look at Lori over his shoulder.

"Good luck with that," Collis said quietly, following his gaze. He gave her a half-smile, as if knowing already he'd have a harder time selling it to his wife that he wanted to go back to Atlanta for Merle, after waking up from a coma, surviving the city and making it to their camp by chance, by some miracle, when she'd thought he was dead. Collis watched him wander over to his wife, curious. Lori was completely different – she'd been trying to keep it together for her son, they could all see that, but she was heartbroken and…and Collis was so quiet people sometimes forgot she was about. She saw more than people would be comfortable with, especially Lori Grimes. Collis couldn't really blame her for turning to a strong, decisive man like Shane, when the world had turned to hell and she believed her husband was dead. But it sure did make Collis smirk inside suspecting what she did about those two, and the implications now that Rick had returned.

She was still watching Rick, the way Lori's features morphed as something unspoken passed between them, she already knew what Rick was about to say, it had probably been on Lori's mind all night, knowing what her husband did about Merle. She knew who her husband was and what drove him; how could she be angry with him for being exactly who he was?

When the screams echoed through the woods, she wasn't the only one flying toward the sound. Lori screamed her son's name and only Rick was ahead of her, whipping through the camp toward the sound of the tin-cans clattering. Knife in her hand, she was the _only_ woman to approach the walker chomping on a gorgeous deer stuck with three bullet-point arrows fletched with fluorescent yellow and pink. Daryl's arrows. A flare of alarm shot through Collis as she realised, the deer was stuck with Daryl's arrows – he had to be close, and was either bit or would be very pissed the walker had jacked his kill.

The walker was hunched over, too distracted by the feast Daryl had felled to notice the half-dozen armed men and Collis surrounding it. The men fell silent, choking up on their weapons as leaves rustled behind Dale and Collis glimpsed golden hair, Andrea and Amy staring at the walker with nauseated expressions. It was the first walker they'd had so close; she'd come across a few much further down the mountain on her trips back from the city, and had wiped them out, but this made her nervous. The kids wouldn't be able to play in the clearing so close to sundown anymore, the way she got them playing capture-the-flag and touch-football while the adults prepared dinner.

As they quietly took position, she kept her ears sharp for any sounds of Daryl – any moans of pain, or the rustle of leaves to signal another person approaching. Live or dead. The walker probably smelled them, rather than heard them; it fumbled to its feet and hissed, roaring. Rick took the first swing, and Collis rolled her eyes at the unnecessary exertion as five men took on one walker; she turned away, but her blade between her teeth and climbed the nearest tree, frowning as she scanned the ground from a better vantage-point. There was nothing in the immediate area, no other walkers that she could see. She glanced back into the clearing as Dale beheaded the walker with a yell, and the men stood around panting, disbelieving. A walker had come to their camp. The blissful rustic domesticity of their new existence had been shattered; they weren't safe, even up here.

"That's the first one we've had up here," Dale said, gasping. "They never come this far up the mountain."

"Well, they're runnin' out of food in the city, that's what," Jim said grimly. Usually his presence was subtle, understated but powerful; he was taciturn and didn't talk about himself, but he was good with cars and had taught Collis, and the kids, some new card-games. He was gentle with the kids and always asked if the women needed help with anything, but he kept to himself. People liked him even if he was reclusive.

A rustling noise had them all raising their weapons again, and none of them looked at Collis as she signalled that it was all-clear; she caught a glimpse of neon orange and a bare arm and smiled to herself. Daryl was back. And he was gonna be _pissed_. Shotguns aimed, axes raised, when Daryl Dixon hopped into view from behind a boulder, the men all grunted and started, surprised it was him. The uneasiness in the clearing was thick as shortening as they all exchanged looks; thoughts of Merle were passing through everyone's minds, as well as Dale's warnings last night that Daryl was going to be a handful.

"Son of a _bitch_!" Daryl swore, striding toward the deer and the decapitated walker, his crossbow in one hand, a rope of squirrels draped over his shoulder. Collis shimmied out of her tree, after a second sweep of the area for other walkers. "That's my deer! Look at it, all gnawed on by this filthy, disease-bearin' motherless poxy bastard!" He punctuated each word with a swift kick to the headless corpse.

"Calm down, son," Dale sighed. "That's not helping."

"What d'you know about it, old man?" Dale asked, aggravated and getting right into Dale's face. "Why don't you take that stupid hat and go back to _On Golden Pond_?" Collis' lips twitched. He sighed heavily, walking away without being told to back off, already focused on the deer, plucking the arrows out of it. "I've been tracking this deer for miles. Was gonna drag it back to camp, cook us up some venison. What d'you think? Think we could cut around this chewed-up part right here?"

"I would not risk that," Shane sighed, though Collis examined the deer and wondered. When a human was bit it took hours, sometimes days for the fever to set in and the human to just…cease to be anything they were before. They _turned_. Animals, as far as she could guess, weren't affected by the bite the way humans were. She hadn't seen any walker-kittens.

"That's a damn shame," Daryl sighed. All that effort, wasted; Collis sympathised. These people had no idea what it meant to be a hunter, the way she and Daryl had both grown up hunting to fill their bellies. It was a hobby for Dale, one he wasn't very good at and didn't enjoy very much, he'd admitted. None of the others had ever probably even seen a deer, unless it ran out in front of them on the road. Daryl sighed and shrugged, turning his back on the deer. "Well, I got some squirrel, 'bout a dozen or so. That'll have to do."

"That's more'n enough," Collis spoke up, and grimaced as the walker's head on the ground started snapping its jaw.

"Oh, _god_," Amy exclaimed tremulously, backing away with Andrea's arms around her.

"C'mon, people, what the hell?!" Daryl exclaimed exasperatedly, aiming his crossbow, and with a whooshing _thwak_, sank one of his neon-fletched arrows into an eye-socket. He pressed the toe of his boot against the head and pulled out his arrow. "It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothin'?" As he strode past, Collis got a glimpse of Rick's face. It was so funny she had to chuckle, wandering forward as she sheathed her knife.

"That's Daryl," she smiled. "He makes an impression, huh." She glanced over her shoulder at the deer. "What a waste."

"We're gon' have to tell him," Shane said gruffly.

"_We_ gotta do nothin'," Collis said coolly, eyeing Shane. She glanced at Rick. "You have all the tact of that goddamn shotgun, this is gonna require a little _finesse_."

"I wrote the book on finesse, a'ight," Shane sniffed dismissively.

"Yeah, and I'm bettin' you always let Rick tell people the bad-news when you knocked on their doors tellin' 'em their loved-ones weren't comin' home," Collis said coolly. After one day she had the measure of Rick Grimes and already respected him; she didn't like, didn't see eye-to-eye with and didn't respect Shane. She stalked off after Daryl, watching the way the sun shone off his bare shoulders – she couldn't help noticing he had the finest arms she'd seen in a while. And those shoulders? _Rawr_. She was still human, and despite everything, she was starting to come alive again. Starting to notice things.

Every time in her life the shit had hit the fan, she'd scraped off the muck, wash her face and cleaned up, get on with business. Collis had no idea how to _not_ keep going even when everything seemed impossible, hopeless. She had never known a day in her life where she hadn't had to struggle for something, anything, whether it was putting food on the table or teaching herself Algebra, paying for new sneakers for Bea and dragging Ephraim home from the jailhouse by his ear after pawning her dad's wedding-ring for bail. It hadn't been so bad they'd lived in a tent but there had been a good long while she'd been terrified they'd lose everything, the roof over their heads and the only source of stability any of them had.

She had no idea how these people lived – people like Lori, stay-at-home moms just lacking the white-picket fence, living off her husband's generous salary; women like Andrea, college-educated, independent and career-driven; even young Amy, still in college, enjoying a lifestyle Collis had only ever seen on TV shows her slut cousins had watched while they came over to have their nails and brows done by her mom and eat the baked goods Collis had spun into a little business all through high-school to put food on their table that she couldn't hunt down in the woods or grow herself.

But Daryl – she'd sized him up the moment they met, regretted they'd have to go back for Merle because Daryl…was so much better off without him. It was an awful thing to think, and she doubted Daryl would ever admit it, if the thought had ever crossed his mind, but relationships like the one between Daryl and his brother were complicated at best.

"Hey," she said softly, approaching him as he slung the squirrels off his shoulder, and he glanced at her.

"Oh, hey," he said, suddenly grinning. "Wanna split the squirrels? Figure you'd wanna teach the kids how to skin 'em, cook 'em. There's enough it won't matter if they mangle a few. 'Specially if it's in your stew."

"I'll have you know my stew is superb," Collis said, smiling softly; thoughtfulness was a trait nobody would expect from the likes of Daryl. They took him at face-value and never expected more out of him than their own presumptions. But he was unexpectedly sweet, and a lot of the time, too. He didn't set out to be the hero, didn't try to ingratiate himself with the group, but there had been flashes of the person he could've been if not for his brother – bringing back food for the whole camp; and teasing little Jorge while they played capture-the-flag, dangling him upside-down until his shrill giggles echoed around the quarry, tormenting Sophia and Mariana with squirrel-guts as he and Collis had skinned his first catch – their faces when he and Collis had eaten the raw guts would forever make Collis grin to herself. "Hey, uh, sweet-pea…I gotta talk to you about Merle."

"Where's he at? Takin' a piss in the quarry where Shane gets the water from?" Daryl scoffed, shaking his head; they both knew that Merle would do just that.

"We boil it first anyway," Collis said drily, and Daryl chuckled. "No. He's still in Atlanta, Daryl." Daryl stilled, and turned to her with a bemused frown. He bit his lip in that way he had, the one that said he was working things over very quickly. He wasn't much of a talker; he was a thinker, and not many people gave him enough credit for that.

"He dead?" he asked quietly, head bowed, squinting in the sunshine.

"Probably not, as I figure it," Collis said, and Daryl scowled. "Goin' through wicked withdrawal, though. Rick tossed away his coke." Daryl blinked sweat out of his eyes, running his hand over his brow.

"He was high?" Daryl asked, and Collis nodded. One thing she'd noticed first about Daryl; he was disgusted by, absolutely _loathed_ drugs, hated that his brother used them. And maybe a little was shamed by Merle's behaviour toward the group when he'd been high around them before.

"He was high," Collis nodded. "He's up on the roof of the department-store, handcuffed to a pipe."

"Handcuffed?!" Daryl exclaimed. "Who the hell handcuffed my brother to a roof?"

Collis could see the anger rising up, and didn't want Daryl to lose the respect people had started having for him by seeing him start a fight with one or two of the others. A hand on his waist and one on his arm stopped him as he made to stride off toward Shane, his expression mutinous; he wasn't so good with being touched but the gentlest touches drew his attention. He was so unused to them, that was why. A man like Daryl Dixon had once been a boy who'd only known hard fists, and probably other things. So how the hell did he know what to do with tenderness? Collis' life had been bleak and terrifying at times, it had been _hard_, but she had at least known true affection.

"It doesn't matter," Collis said. Daryl would never take a swing at a woman but he'd have no qualms breaking Rick's jaw for risking Merle's life, no matter how often Merle made him feel worthless. "It may even have done him some good. Mandatory detox. His stash couldn't last forever. It rained last night so he got water… And I'm goin' back for him this mornin'."

"You're goin' back for'm?" Daryl blinked sweat – or tears – out of his eyes. Then he frowned at her, shaking his head. "Naw, you're not gonna go get him. Strung out and pissed, no way. You ain't goin' near him."

"Daryl –" She smiled at him; he'd pinched her chin gently, in one of the shocking displays of sweetness and affection that always took her by surprise, and yet they weren't surprising coming from him.

"She won't be going alone," interrupted a stern voice, and Rick approached.

"Who the hell're you?"

"Rick Grimes."

"Rick _Grimes_?!" Daryl repeated, and Collis shot Rick a glare, annoyed at the interruption that might've just blown her chance of getting them all through this without Daryl losing the respect of the others, and that was what she was most worried about.

"I'm the one who handcuffed your brother to the rooftop," Rick admitted, and Collis sighed.

"Hold on," Daryl said, his anger skyrocketing again, and Collis sighed. "Lemme just process this. So you handcuffed my brother to a roof, and you _left him there_?"

"Yes."

"Daryl –"

"What I did was not on a whim," Rick said urgently, with the quiet sense of stern finality she had come to realise was ever-present in his voice. "Your brother does not work and play well with others."

"It's not Rick's fault," T-Dog spoke up, staggering forward, squinting in the sun, his shaved head glittering with sweat. "I had the key. I dropped it."

"You couldn't pick it up?" Daryl asked doggedly.

"Well, I dropped it down the drain," T-Dog said contritely, and Daryl let out a half-amused little sob, lowering his head.

"If it's supposed to make me feel better, it don't," Daryl glowered.

"Maybe this will," T-Dog said. "I chained the door to the roof so the geeks can't get at him, with a padlock."

"It's gotta count for something," Rick said quietly. Collis adjusted her cap, uncomfortable with the emotion pouring out of Daryl's face; he raised a dusty hand to wipe his eyes, looking on the verge of tears, and then swore at them all.

"Hell with all y'all," he shouted, but his voice broke as he said, "Just tell me where he is, so's I can go get him."

"He'll show you," Lori said softly from under the shade of the RV. "Isn't that right?"

"I told Collis I wasn't comfortable her going alone to free your brother," Rick said, straight-shouldered and unafraid. He'd probably dealt with far worse than Daryl Dixon, or his brother. Tired and weary, scoffing, Lori pulled herself up into the RV where the kids were hiding. Collis glanced at Rick.

"You don't have to come, Rick," she said gently. "Me an' Daryl, we'll be fine."

"No, this is on me," Rick said quietly. "I cuffed Merle to the roof. I gotta do this, don't sit right for you to fix my mistakes." Ten minutes later Rick was suited up in his freshly-laundered sheriff's uniform, striding toward the group clustered around the fire. She had counted her knives, emptied her pack, and grabbed hold of the map of Atlanta. With expert huntsman Daryl and the capable Sheriff's Deputy taking care of Merle, it gave her opportunity to continue her scavenging of the city unhindered. Yesterday had been a bit of a bust on account of the frequent check-ins with the walkies and heading back to the base at the department-store rather than find a ride straight out of the city when she was finished, and the opportunity was too good to pass up. She'd asked Andrea and consulted with Glenn, borrowed one of the coloured pencils she'd found for Mariana and planned several routes – Glenn knew the area like the back of his hand, though he regretted the residents didn't tip more generously when he delivered pizzas.

" – tell me _why_, why would you risk your life for a douchebag like Merle Dixon?" Shane's voice rang out as he strode after Rick.

"Hey!" Daryl scowled, brandishing a couple arrows at Shane. "Choose your words more carefully."

"Oh, no, I did; douchebag's what I meant," Shane said coolly. "Merle Dixon. Guy wouldn't give you a glass of water if you were dyin' of thirst."

"What he would or wouldn't do doesn't interest me. _I _can't let a man die of thirst, _me_. Thirst and exposure. We left him like an animal caught in a trap," Rick said, wincing guiltily. "That's no way for anything to die, let alone a human-being."

"So you and Collis and Daryl, that's your big plan?" The disdain dripped from Lori's voice, and Collis knew the general attitude toward the Dixon brothers. These people had all been moderately well-off before everything was overturned. Never had to worry too much about paying the mortgage, feeding their children. They looked at people like the Dixon brothers and saw trash, bad guys who caused trouble and bounced in and out of jail. And that _was_ Merle.

"Disdain doesn't look pretty on you, Lori," Collis said quietly, glancing over at the other woman. Her cheekbones popped, taken aback, but she had the grace to blush a little. Rick was already glancing around for Glenn, whose expression fell.

"Come on!" he moaned.

"You know the way. You've been there before, in and out, no problem, you said so yourself. It's not fair of me to ask, I know that, but I'd feel a lot better with you along, I know she would too," Rick said, indicating his wife.

"That's just great, now you're gonna risk three men, huh?" Shane said angrily, and Collis glanced sharply at him.

"I beg your pardon?" she said coolly, and Shane did a double-take at her, shifting uncomfortably. "Anyway, how is it your say? Our lives, our risk."

"I'm comin' too," T-Dog spoke up.

Daryl scoffed, cleaning his arrows. "My day just gets better an' better, don't it?"

"You see anybody else out here steppin' up to save your brother's cracker ass?" T-Dog asked.

"Why're you?" Daryl asked, still focused on his task and disinterested.

"You wouldn't even begin to understand. You don't speak my language," T-Dog sighed.

"That's five," Dale said.

"It's not just five," Shane said agitatedly. He was doing that fidgeting thing he did when he was about to explode from frustration and, Collis always thought, the knowledge that he was completely and utterly out of his depth. "You're putting every single one of us at risk, just know that, Rick."

Collis sighed, tired of this same argument. He didn't like them going into the city but didn't stop them, didn't offer to make the runs himself. Yesterday if Rick hadn't gotten the others out, Shane would've left them in the city to die, get bitten or eaten, starve to death, either way. He wouldn't have felt bad about it because he'd have felt that they'd earned it, he'd warned them of the risk. He would all but say 'I told you so'.

"Come on, you saw that walker, it was _here_. It was in camp!" Shane exclaimed. "They're moving out of the cities, we need every able body we've got, we need 'em here, we need 'em to _protect_ camp."

Collis frowned. "So Carol and Andrea and Amy are _dis_abled?" she asked. Shane frowned at her. "You've got able bodies, you just think y'all have gotta have _dicks_ to be capable of protectin' yourself."

"That's not what I said," Shane groused.

"It's what you imply every day when you send Jacqui and Carol off to do the laundry, fetch firewood," Collis said. "You smirk every time it's brought up I'm a Marine, like it's funny, me playin' GI dress-up. Instead of bitching about us goin' to the city how 'bout you start taking responsibility around here, more'n just throwin' your weight around when the fire gets too high. Organise sweeps of the woods every couple hours, there's a double-watch from now on, clear some of the tents away from the tree-line so visibility isn't a problem. The kids stay in this area right here, and you show Andrea how to shoot that gun her daddy gave her."

For a second, Shane didn't look like he knew what to do with the sharp, no-nonsense way she'd spoken to him, issuing orders that made too much sense to argue with. Because she _had_ been thinking how to make the camp more defensible, she'd just known she'd get resistance from Shane because _he_ knew best. Shane scoffed and strode away, antsy and probably feeling a bruise to his ego as the others exchanged looks and Dale nodded, but he came back, still unwilling to let things lie.

"What we do need, though," Rick said softly, "are more guns."

"Right," Glenn said. "The guns."

"Wait, what guns?"

"Six shotguns. Two high-powered rifles, over a dozen handguns," Rick said. "I cleaned out the cage back at the station before I left. I dropped the bag in Atlanta when I got swarmed. It's just sittin' there on the street waiting to be picked up."

"Ammo?"

"Over seven hundred rounds, assorted," Rick said.

"So, is that sorted?" Collis asked, glancing around. "Y'all can stop having a hissy and we can get goin'? Could've been halfway there by now. Glenn, go get the van started. You know the way." Glenn nodded, grabbing his backpack before darting to the van.

"You went through _hell_ to find us," Lori spoke up, and Collis prayed for patience. "You just got here and you're gonna turn around and leave?"

Collis glanced between Lori and Rick, shaking her head in disbelief. "We can get to the city, get Merle, and get back in the time it's gonna take y'all to sort through your _drama_! Y'all have got thirty seconds to get your asses in that van or we're leavin' you and all your good intentions behind. Five…_six_…" She strode to the van, opening the passenger-door, keeping an eye on the others in the side-view mirror.

"What's going on?" Glenn asked, checking the fuel gauge.

"Matrimonial bliss," Collis sighed. "C'mon, let's go. I haven't got time for the bullshit-storm that's stirrin' up back there."

"What about Rick?" Glenn asked, as T-Dog and Daryl climbed into the back of the van.

"I'm here," Rick called, and Glenn nodded as he pulled the door down, keeping Daryl, T-Dog and himself locked securely in the back. Collis glanced over her shoulder and frowned at Rick. "Your wife and best-friend are uniquely frustratin' people." Rick's smile had an edge to it as he sat down closest to the seats.

"You don't think much of Shane, do you," he guessed.

"He doesn't think much of women in general," Collis said quietly. "Why should I think much of him in particular?"

"He's not as bad as you think."

"How many girlfriends has he had?" Collis asked shrewdly. Rick glanced at her, his answer written in his face. "And how many times was it _his_ fault they broke up?" Again, Rick didn't need to answer, his expression said it all. Collis gave him a pointed look, rummaging in her pack, and Rick raised his eyebrows when she brought out a paperback novel, the same one she'd been reading yesterday on their ride to the camp.

If she could say one thing about all this, she could honestly say she was glad her family and friends weren't around to frustrate her to hell, getting in the way of pragmatic decision-making because they were scared and needed a crutch.

Collis didn't believe in miracles; but Rick Grimes reuniting with his family against all the odds was the closest thing there could be to one. And she had to think that meant something.

But _goddamn_ was she frustrated and disdainful on his behalf for how clingy and impossible Lori was being. She'd been without her husband for weeks, had found comfort and support in his partner and best-friend: But one night back and Lori and Carl had latched onto Rick like life-support. Maybe it was their fear Rick might not return, but over the weeks they had all come to learn a few of each other's histories, and Lori had admitted to the girls on a half-empty stomach and too many beers that her marriage had been put under a lot of strain before her husband had been shot.

Watching the way Lori was about Rick's desire to go back to the city, Collis figured that _Lori_ had done a lot to create that strain; because Rick was being exactly who he was and putting others first, doing the very best he could to be the better person, drawn to protecting and helping others. Collis would bet that had made him a good cop; and his smarts and discipline were why _he_ had been Sheriff's Deputy not Shane, who wouldn't dare take any risk even if he'd die leaving a better impression on people than they'd had of him during his life. Lori was angry and frustrated that Rick was willing to leave her, leave Carl, to gamble on Merle Dixon and a bag of guns in Atlanta. Lori might've perceived it that Rick was choosing strangers over his own family: and she wondered how often Lori had made it so difficult for Rick to be who he was.

She would never say it, kept her opinions to herself unless they were kind, but being so quiet she'd observed a lot about the group. She felt that Lori Grimes really needed to learn how to take care of her damn self and stop relying on menfolk to look after her.

* * *

**A.N.**: Lori _frustrates me_. She's demanding, impatient and can't take care of herself, let alone anyone else. She seems to be angry and disdainful of Rick for him being exactly who he is. One wonders how often she lost Carl in the supermarket.


	4. Orphans

**A.N.**: So, from this chapter on things deviate dramatically from canon. I've got plans for what's going to happen, I thought I was going to kill Andrea instead of Amy, because I think watching Amy's progression from an innocent college-kid who still loves mermaids into a really strong woman would have been very interesting. Now I've got an even _better_ idea.

* * *

**Our Deepest Fear**

_03_

_Orphans_

* * *

"Okay, so, I think we should go over the rules before we actually get into the city," Glenn said, glancing back at the others. "We need to get in and out, no drawing attention to ourselves if we can possibly help it. I'll park at the train-tracks under the overpass, it's a good central spot in case we get separated and the streets are quieter because it was an industrial area rather than housing. So, biggest rule, _no guns_."

"Agreed," Rick nodded.

"You had no idea what you were doin' yesterday, ridin' into the city, poppin' off them shots," T-Dog said quietly.

"No," Rick said quietly. "I… I had no idea, no notion how widespread…how _apocalyptic _this thing was."

"Nobody knew, not really. Not 'til they was droppin' napalm in the streets," Daryl spoke up, eyes on the girl as Rick glanced back. By the way the others had spoken of him, Rick had expected something a little different from Daryl Dixon. He'd met guys like him; easily agitated, bad families, wrong decisions made too young, all attitude but, ultimately, it was mostly a defence mechanism, and guys like him were not that difficult to handle. And he cared about his brother, Rick had seen that straight off. His reactions were too visceral. He'd been blinking tears from his eyes several times during their confrontation, overcome with emotion at hearing his brother had been left for dead. He _cared_ about his brother; and that meant he wasn't a total loss. He wasn't _like_ his brother.

"Bombs?" Rick frowned.

"Few weeks ago, choppers unloaded on Atlanta," T-Dog said solemnly. "'Fore we set up camp. Fire-bombs all over downtown."

"Fire? That works?"

"Don't kill 'em," Daryl grunted softly, wiping his mouth with a rag. "Slows 'em some. Gotta be the brain, though. Head-shot, clean as you can make it."

"You all had much experience with 'em?"

"Too damn much," T-Dog sighed. "Overran my whole neighbourhood, barely got out."

"They're not so bad, just a handful. Same as bein' in any fight, just don't let 'em get any licks in," Daryl shrugged. "Don't waste your ammo, neither, nothin' but a head-shot'll keep 'em down."

"How'd you get all the way to Atlanta not knowin' nothing about all this?" T-Dog asked. Rick sighed softly, glancing out the window as mountain-scenery turned into broad highway, the sky opening up without trees to keep it at bay. "You woke up in that hospital and what? How the hell d'you take all that in?"

"Hospital?" Daryl frowned.

"He's Lori's old-man," Collis said quietly, just barely glancing back at the hunter.

"No shit. Heard you were dead."

"I was as good as. Woke up in the hospital…if it wasn't for a guy named Morgan, his son…I'd've been dead on my own doorstep. Told me what happened, what they are, told me about Atlanta, the CDC. Plan was to hook up when Morgan'd taken care of his business." At the others' frowns, Rick added, "His wife." Solemnity passed across the men's faces, Daryl Dixon wiped his mouth with his rag again, keeping his eyes on Rick. He didn't want to have to ask the awkward questions, but these people had been around Lori and Carl; Shane obviously knew them well enough to be comfortable with them being so close, even Merle and Daryl, and Rick had always trusted Shane's instincts, he just never went on another's faith alone. He wanted to know who these men were around his family. And women. "Have you lost anyone?"

"Couple, in the beginnin'," Daryl shrugged. "Don't hurt, thinking 'bout 'em though. Strangers."

"Yeah, before we set up at the quarry," T-Dog sighed.

"It's a good setup. Cliff overlookin' the lake gives a natural boundary, protection," Rick mused, thinking back on the camp with the watch-position on top of Dale's RV, the cliffs on one side, single point of easy access, woods for hunting, the lake for water and fish. "Smart."

"We got lucky. Just glad it isn't winter," Collis said. "We'd be a lot worse off."

"Pretty bad off now," Daryl grumbled. She reached back, and Daryl glanced up as she rested a hand on his bent knee, without even looking up from her book. When they'd met he'd thought she must have ice in her veins, how the hell else did she survive the damn heat, the pressure?

"No worse than we're used to," she said quietly, glancing back at Daryl, who shrugged. She sighed. "Well, with you all takin' care of Merle, you alright for me to go off and take care of some things?"

"You're going off by yourself again?" Glenn asked, glancing at her.

"Got things to do," Collis said, not looking up from her book. "Didn't get nearly as much done yesterday as I wanted."

"How much time d'you need?" Rick asked. "We did this on the condition it'd be quick and easy."

"We go back to the old way," Collis said, glancing at Glenn.

"Are you sure?" Glenn asked anxiously.

"It worked far better," Collis said softly.

"What's the old way?" Rick frowned disapprovingly.

"We split up when we get into the city. Get what we need, agree on a certain time to meet back up at a pre-decided location," Glenn said, glancing back at him. "We wait fifteen minutes for each other, if we're not back by then we head back to camp. Whoever's left behind finds their own way back. And guess who that always is?" Collis didn't look up from her book.

"Thought you wanted to come back to the city for Merle," Daryl said quietly, and this time Collis did look up from her book.

"I offered for you," she said softly, holding eye-contact with Daryl. He didn't answer, probably didn't know how; he just gazed at her for a minute, then looked away, uncomfortable. Glenn drove them into the city, parking under an overpass. There was an abandoned coach nearby, small suitcases tossed across the ground, a few bodies lying here and there.

"Merle first or the guns?" Rick asked, as the clambered through the chain-link fence that kept the train-tracks protected from walkers.

"Merle! We ain't even havin' this conversation!" Daryl cried angrily.

"We are," Rick said sternly. "Glenn, you know the geography. Your call."

"Guns will need doubling-back. Merle first," Glenn decided. He glanced at Collis, securing her sunglasses over her eyes. "Meet back up here?"

"No, I'm going the opposite direction, too many things could go wrong, me tryin' to backtrack. I'll meet you back at camp," Collis said, with the kind of quiet finality that left no room for argument.

"Are you sure?" Rick asked. He couldn't _not_. Collis going off by herself. Knowing the danger, the sheer magnitude of walkers, how could he with a clear conscience let her go off by herself? "You go off on your own, you've no-one to protect you."

"I've got no-one to slow me down," Collis said quietly. "We're wastin' time arguin'; you go off now, get Merle. Head back to camp with those guns, stop Shane poutin'. I'll get back to camp one way or another."

"Be careful," Glenn said softly.

"And you, too. Eyes sharp, stay light on your feet," Collis said, tapping the bill of Glenn's cap, and he smiled, adjusting it back into place.

"See you back at camp," Daryl said, and Collis nodded, smiling at him.

"I'll be seein' you, sweet-pea," she said softly, and with that she turned and jogged off, one hand on the hilt of her machete, ready. She could hear the boys' footsteps retreating as she picked up speed. Her entire life had been building up to this point, to entering a hostile city overrun with the reanimated dead. Experience had taught her a few secrets to use the walkers against each other, when she came into the city with Glenn, she went off by herself, safe in the knowledge Glenn was smart and resourceful, and was intimidated by her enough she could scare him into leaving the second his watch hit the 14:59 mark even if she wasn't there.

Deploying overseas had given her too much experience in active warzones; her adolescence had prepared her for a life independent of grocery-stores; and as for scavenging – all she'd had to do was shed the discomfort of taking things from people's houses. And that hadn't taken much effort.

What always struck her, coming into the city, was the quiet. There was _nothing_. At camp the cicadas created a chorus, invisible; the others chattered quietly and the kids usually giggled when it was play-time. But in the city, there was nothing, no vibrant thrum of _life_, no traffic, not even the hum from traffic-lights, occasionally she heard a bird chirping but it was an eerie sound, like the baying of a trapped dog. Entering the city was like entering a different world; a world belonging to the dead.

People thought it was difficult, taking down walkers. That might be so, when a person was swarmed. But it was easy, when the emotion was taken out of it. Collis found it easier killing them than she ever had found it pointing a gun in active warzones in the Middle-East. They weren't alive. They were what stood between her and survival; and Collis didn't know how to give up. She did know how to kill; and they were decomposing bodies. They might keep coming if she stabbed them in the stomach but they were deteriorating; their bones weren't strong like hers, a head-shot took a good amount of effort with her knife but less than if she'd been killing another living person. Shane had been speaking a little bit of truth earlier, when they'd been discussing bullets versus hand-to-hand; always going for the forehead with her knife she did risk her forearm being torn up by walker teeth, and her eyes were peeled for a good set of leather wrist-cuffs. They'd be ideal for archery, too. At the moment she was just careful, and she used her machete; as quietly as she could, she dispatched whatever walkers she came across. The entire human-race was outnumbered with ridiculous odds; every walker she took down was one less to threaten her and the human-race's survival. That was a heady thought. One with a head-shot, the other, she slashed its arms off, kicked it to its front and grabbed a handful of hair to use as leverage as she cut off its jaw. It was quick and easy work, provided no other walkers lurked nearby; she'd dodged quite a few before she'd found a quiet street where she could have the space and time to do what she needed before other walkers were attracted to her scent.

As soon as she had the walker lashed up with a rope she always carried attached to her pack, she was good to go. It wasn't infallible, but she'd learned keeping one close warded off the others, camouflage. It was a gruesome business, prepping the body, but she just didn't think about it. Couldn't. She'd got this far, done what she had, because she hadn't thought about it. Hadn't let it in. It was too horrific; if she let it touch her, she'd break into a million pieces. There was nobody to put her back together again, and she knew the effort it'd take to do it herself. The others couldn't afford for her to fall apart. Her dependents had never given her that luxury, that of being able to fall apart. The same was true now; she kept herself pulled together, because the others couldn't afford her to be anything but what she was now. Detached, strong, calm.

The silence got to her, though. Every time. It was eerie. The desert had never been like this, even. And as always when she thought of the city, the walkers, her mind turned to the desert. To her friends still deployed out there. She found herself smiling; there was now no gods, no gasoline, no political agendas, no nuclear threats, no terrorists. Just the humans. And the walkers. Whoever was left over there, she hoped every human left standing was helping each other out. Putting all that ideology bullshit aside, taking care of each other.

With the sun beaming down on her, the humidity was already pressing against her like a tight and uncomfortable hug, the heat rising steadily, and she actually missed the continuous song of the cicadas, the birdsong in the woods. She kept her eyes peeled, listened harder than she ever had, and kept her footsteps light, guiding the stumbling walker down the streets she needed. Glenn had helped her mark the city-map and she had memorised the routes and locations of different places. And, as was her habit, she started rounding up empty shells she found on the ground, glittering in the sun, hot to touch, storing them in one of the baggy pockets of her pants. _They need gunpowder_, Shane's voice rang through her head, and she scowled, striding on faster.

Dead bodies everywhere, half-packed cars waiting to be climbed into to escape the city, walkers drifting aimlessly, suitcases thrown across the ground, Collis kept her eyes sharp for anything, whether it was another couple walkers drifting onto the street or a box of Band Aids in a suitcase, a full magazine in a gun still clasped in the hand of a rotting soldier's corpse. There were plenty weapons just lying around. She picked knives and handguns, a few grenades, ammo, chem-lights and a few packs off of dead soldiers, couldn't imagine her boys would mind a fellow grunt doing what she needed to. The walker she'd roped was good for more than just camouflage; she draped one of the packs over its back, one across its front, and kept adding things to them as she wandered on, scavenging, opening abandoned suitcases. Even in the heart of an abandoned city overrun by the dead, she could still pause and be amazed by what people packed for emergencies. Flip-flops, a case of DVDs, makeup, a curling-iron, a sweater and batteries for their vibrator.

She shook her head in disbelief, but she did keep the colourful, quilted pocket-organiser bag, stuffed with Vaseline, safety pins, Pepto-Bismol, cotton pads, a handful of condoms, a bag of banana-chips, fruit leathers, a sewing kit and all other kinds of useful stuff like stretchy bandages, pins and blister-packs, wet-wipes, _Tide-to-Go_ pens and hand sanitizer. In another bag in the same car she found a stash of _Fruit Squish'ems_, _Rice Sides_ and _Nature Valley_ granola bars, ginger teabags, a few tubs of _Motrin_ and a crate of expensive fruity waters. She rolled her eyes at them but tucked a few into her pockets and packs; she didn't look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Fact was, she loved scavenging. Growing up she'd never had money for anything, her clothes had been hand-me-downs from her cousins; she'd learned to eat dinner at the grocery-store, steal what she couldn't afford. Now she scavenged a wok and a catering-sized bag of rice from a car abandoned outside an Asian market, another small First Aid kit, some long-life batteries and an LED camping lantern, a mosquito net and emergency flares, a switchblade, and she smiled as she pulled a huge tub of _Bazooka_ and a jumbo bag of sunflower-seeds from the back seat inside a crate of provisions.

And she was humming softly to herself as she continued down the street, sucking down a pot of apple-sauce, delighting over the goodies she'd found in a glove-compartment, a nickel-plated 3032 Tomcat _Berretta_ and a beautiful _Smith &amp; Wesson_ 6906 that had her drooling, with three full boxes of bullets in the foot-space. She'd found empty thigh and ankle holsters on a couple soldiers and now kitted herself out, tucking the small _Tomcat_ inside her boot where it couldn't be seen, along with the tiny KA-BAR 1478BP knife tucked inside the laces of her boot – she was a safety-girl. She had a haul of goodies in her packs, just knowing where to look, and as time wore on she added even more – an inflatable pink _Disney_ princess pool she was sure Carol would appreciate for laundry so they didn't have to contaminate the quarry with detergent, a _Ziploc_ baggie stuffed full of matchbooks picked up from bars; in a tiny Italian restaurant she'd discovered a few packs of what looked like emergency-backup mini-ravioli, the cheese _Trader Joe's_ kind her first roommate after basic-training had lived off of; she found authentic pasta-making utensils and, reflecting that maybe she was too hopeful for her own good, added them to her pack, thinking ahead to the possibility of finding fresh eggs. In an expensive cigar-shop she found a _Glock_ 21 hidden by the cash-register, and a family-planning clinic offered up a great haul of antibiotics, painkillers and bandages; she refilled her hipflask and took a shot – a few shots – of tequila in a Mexican restaurant where she found catering-sized cans of refried beans, masa and shortening.

She wouldn't say she was a _good_ girl. If she'd been in uniform there was no way she'd ever disgrace it by taking hits of stolen booze while she guided a headless, jawless corpse through the city carrying her scavenged things. But she wasn't in uniform, and she'd been a survivor long before she'd been a Marine. And even as a Marine, that hadn't been the sum total of who she was, not for years. She'd built a life, a beautiful one, surrounded by laughter and affection, security. Something she had never taken for granted, as it was so rare in her life, so precious, something she had striven for.

The congregation of walkers up ahead made her stop with a sigh, frowning as she gauged where she needed to go. She had mapped out different routes with Glenn based on the map and his knowledge of the area, just in case something like this happened – but in case some of those other routes were just as clogged with more walkers than she wanted to pass through even with her camouflage, she needed to get high. The hunter in her always headed for high ground. It was a relief to fall under the shade of the buildings, the tall buildings and narrower street gave the illusion of safety compared to the wide boulevards crawling with walkers. She tied her walker up to a dumpster and climbed a ladder up to the first landing of a fire-escape. This side of the building, an apartment block with small boutiques, restaurants and salons on the street, overlooked a park. Beyond it, the skyline was open, a few buildings here and there, she could see a church and baseball diamonds, beyond it, a grand building, apartment blocks.

Up and up she climbed the fire-escape, gazing out. That had to be the campus. The park wasn't half as crowded as the streets, in fact it was pretty much a clear shot. Too easy; too dangerous. Wide open spaces like that, the trained soldier in her, the one still locked in combat in the Middle-East, said that was no-man's land, do _not_ enter that seemingly innocuous territory. But it was either that or risk wading through walkers on the streets. If she took off that way, she could keep to the tree-line up the length of the park. She was sure there would be more walkers on the campus, they tended to gravitate toward large structures where lots of people had once congregated. Passing schools was the worst. But at least there weren't many corpses left behind.

The sun beat down on her, and she glanced up. She didn't have to check the watches she'd got from a store – she figured if there were more runs like this the others could use them – she knew by the height of the sun it was midday, maybe a little past. She stopped, pulling a bottle of fruit water from her pack, grimacing. It was warm, and fashionable waters like this were obviously supposed to be drunk chilled with special ice-cubes or something, but it was wet and purified. She didn't dive into any more of the provisions she had found, she had trained for hunger. She did pause for breath, though…caught by the quiet, the view, the sun beating down on her, sweating through her shirt, weary and a little light-headed from the exertion, what it took out of her to be on her guard like this. The quiet got to her.

She heard something knocking on the window beside her.

Turned, and had a small heart-attack, almost dropping her water-bottle as she reached for her machete, her heartbeat hammering in her throat at the little face smiling out at her.

Collis stared. This was absurd. She'd come into an abandoned city scavenging for supplies to help her camp survive, the city infested with the dead returned to consume the living. And a little face was _smiling_ at her from behind the glass. Just…a little kid. A little girl, cocoa-skinned with unusual freckles and a mane of natural hair that glinted in beautiful curls around her head like an enormous dark halo. The little girl smiled out, and Collis stared back, startled and utterly stunned. A little girl, a little _living _girl was smiling at her from her apartment window. A window she was in the process of unlocking, fumbling excitedly with the lock, and she pushed the sash window up and open. Collis continued to stare as the little girl squinted in the sun, her face scrunching up. She couldn't have been more than five or six, beautiful, more than half her body-weight made up of that untamed hair. Collis squatted down slightly and capped her water-bottle.

"Hi!" the little girl chirped.

"Hello," she said hoarsely. It was the first thing she'd said in hours since separating from Glenn and the others, and not drinking enough hadn't helped. She peered past the little girl into a living-room filled with amber light, there were photographs on the wall, it was prettily decorated, DVDs were stacked up by a television and magazines and nail-polish bottles were tossed on the coffee-table; she could see empty _Gatorade_ bottles lined up neatly on the linoleum floor in the bright kitchen with its aubergine-purple wall and chilli plant heavy with peppers. It was strange seeing a blender glinting on the side, chopping-boards ready to be used, the vase on the sideboard, a basket of laundry folded on the dining-table just under the window.

"Are you here to rescue me?" the little girl asked. She was little enough that innocence and hope, excitement, radiated from her face like a light. _Happiness_. Delight, it twinkled in her eyes and her smile was so guileless.

"Do you need rescuin'?" she asked.

"Moms said Daddy was gonna come get me so we can go on an adventure," the little girl grinned eagerly. Then she frowned, fiddling with the window-frame. "But he didn't come."

"I think he tried," Collis said softly. "Did Daddy not live with you?"

"No. He and Moms got a _deevorce_," she said softly, yawning widely. She fidgeted where she stood, glancing up at Collis. "I like your hair. It's the same colour as Merida's." Collis smiled.

"I liked _Brave_ too," she said softly, not missing a beat, and the little girl grinned.

"_I_ think Merida's the best but _my_ sister Rachael likes Hiccup," she declared, and Collis smiled again.

"Well, he has a dragon," she said fairly.

"That's what Rachael said," the little girl sighed, giving her a jaunty smile.

"Is Mommy there?" Collis asked. She couldn't believe anyone had survived the city; when Atlanta had fallen, when the bombs had been deployed, everyone had looked on and known there was nothing left, no hope. No survivors. The living would have joined the dead in those blasts.

"Mm…" The little girl winced. She glanced from Collis to a door inside the apartment. Then she offered her tiny hand – Collis blinked; her fingernails were painted the same gorgeous iridescent dark-sapphire as the dress she was wearing. Nail polish. _Nail-polish_. Such a thing still existed?! She manoeuvred inside through the open window. A basket of laundry was folded on the dining-table, there was a cherry-red cast-iron skillet on the stove and there were photographs on the walls, birthday-cards on a sideboard. She was in someone's bright, beautifully-decorated home. She pulled the window down, locking it again, drew the curtains closed to keep the room cool and keep eyes off them. She propped her sunglasses on top of her cap and squinted in the dimmed light, noticing the details. The empty _Gatorade_-bottles lined up neatly under the breakfast-bar, the trash-bag full of wrappers from granola-bars, bags of potato-chips, packaging from _Goldfish_ and _WonderBread_, cookies, candy-bars and cereal boxes. Someone had pushed the heavy sofa flush against the front-door as a blockade.

There was typical _mess_ on the living-room floor, around the coffee-table, from a child's uninhibited _playing_, doll's clothes and colouring pages, probably her sister's makeup – glittery pink _MAC_ shadow pots, nail-polishes – magazines tossed on the floor open to glossy spreads, picture-books, square tear-offs from a 365-day _Calvin &amp; Hobbes_ calendar. She jumped when the little girl reached up and tucked her hand inside Collis', guiding her to a door.

"Moms and Rachael are in here," she said quietly, looking down at the floor. The way she said it, the way she had been allowed to spread out all her toys and playthings across the living-room, Collis' gut instinct screamed something awful had happened. But the little girl opened the door, and led Collis into a pretty bedroom. Photographs lined the walls, there was a pretty vanity with neatly-organised cosmetics and more pictures, and lying on the bed were two women. One could hardly be older than eighteen, and the other was obviously her mother. The bodies hadn't started to truly decompose yet, they couldn't have been dead long, not in this heat. And they were still beautiful. That's what struck Collis. The immediate and unquenchable sorrow at seeing two beautiful women, the older embracing the younger. Bullet-wounds to the head. Both were African-American like the little girl, the teenager had the same unusual freckles, but her waist-length hair was wound in a pretty weave; she wore a powder-blue Minnie Mouse t-shirt, had gold hoops in her ears, and her lips were still stained with gorgeous fuchsia lipstick. She had a chunk missing out of her neck, and old blood stained the delicate floral bed-sheets. Her mother had the same wild, natural hair as the little girl and had her arms around her daughter.

A glass of iced-tea rested on the bedside table, alongside a plate with the crust of a stale sandwich. Bottles of nail-polish and cotton-balls stood next to framed photographs of the three smiling girls. The little girl looked up at Collis with sad eyes brimming with tears. "They're dead, aren't they?"

"They are," Collis said softly. The mother had taken her daughter's life, and then her own, before the fever could hit and they would be a threat to the little girl. Collis glanced down at her. "How long have they been like that?"

"Mm." The little girl squinted thoughtfully, and turned to the living-room. While she was gone, Collis carefully removed the tiny _Colt_ Pony from between mother and daughter. She examined the photographs on the bedside-table, the vanity, her chest aching. The little girl came back with a few of the _Calvin &amp; Hobbes_ calendar pages. "This many. I take 'em off before I go to bed." Collis nodded, glanced at the two women on the bed. She took the comics, nodding, and guided the little girl out of the bedroom.

She sighed and squatted down, almost overbalancing because of her pack. "What's your name?"

"Noelle. Because I was born on Christmas," she said quietly. Collis smiled.

"It's a pretty name. Mine's Collis," she said softly. She offered her hand. "It's very nice to meet you, Noelle."

"It's nice to meet you too," Noelle said, shaking her hand with an innocent smile.

"Have you been taking care of yourself?" she asked, and Noelle nodded.

"I brush my teeth, and I make my bed," she said, gazing earnestly at Collis.

"That's very grown-up of you," she said, smiling sadly. "Noelle…you know you can't stay here all by yourself, don't you?"

"Am I coming with you?" she asked innocently. "Moms said I'm not allowed out. The dead people will eat me, like the movies."

"Well, she's right," Collis said softly. "But you can't stay in this apartment. And I don't live here. I live with some people out by the woods. There's little ones there, too, just about your size."

"Really?" Noelle asked eagerly, and Collis nodded.

"I think if your mama knew…who I was, she'd ask me to take care of you," she said honestly. She didn't have much to recommend her but Collis had raised kids. Good ones, despite obvious issues and circumstances outside their control, enterprising spirits and a certain inherited disrespect for the law.

Collis didn't believe in God, or if she thought about Him, she thought he and his son might be taking all the credit – and the blame – for another force. _Fate_, she put her faith in; the belief that everything happened for a reason. Everything she'd been put through in her life had led her to this point, she'd known that going through all the awful shit, she knew that looking back. For some reason she'd been led to pause on that fire-escape, to take a drink of water and be caught up briefly by the beauty of the view. Even amid the awful things they were going through. She had stopped on that landing and little Noelle had seen her drinking water and knocked on the window. A grown-up. Asking Collis if she was here to rescue her. Because Collis had the same red hair as Noelle's favourite _Disney_ princess, the fiery and independent, bow-wielding redhead Merida. Noelle had been left alone, and Collis had stopped on that particular landing of the fire-escape to take a drink of water. That wasn't a coincidence.

She still thought everything happened for a reason. She'd come into the city today, she'd stumbled upon Noelle. A tiny orphan abandoned in the centre of a walker-infested city. She couldn't leave Noelle by herself, but the thought of taking her out of this apartment into the city, back to camp…to live a life on the run, always fearful, even if she grew up in the outdoors learning skills that would get her through any scrape except the SATs, was a daunting, harrowing thought. How could she even start trying to explain that Noelle couldn't stay in her home, with her pretty things? That one day the walkers would overpower that sofa and devour her alive, if she didn't die of starvation or risk leaving the apartment through the window for food. Collis had read _Flowers in the Attic_, seen _The Blue Lagoon_ probably too many times than was healthy, but what life would Noelle have had, stuck inside this apartment, not allowed to use the stove, unable to count past fifty, still gazing at her picture-books. Not a _feral_ child, but she would never grow into an _adult_. If she made it to double-digits and puberty, adolescence.

Just then, Noelle's stomach rumbled, loud enough Collis heard it, and Noelle gave her a guilty little smile. "Are you hungry?" She nodded. "Well, let's see what you've got."

"Are you allowed to use the stove?" Noelle asked, a little awed.

"Yes, ma'am," Collis nodded, opening the cupboards. Everything was clean, neatly organised. And the cupboards were full – everything untouched that Noelle wasn't allowed to prepare because it involved a stove, or because the microwave no longer had power. There were tins of soup and chilli, Betty Crocker mash and cake-mix, grits, Rice-a-Roni, cornbread, instant noodles, pasta, oatmeal, snack-bars, fruit-cups, Cup-a-Soup, dried fruit, nuts, peanut-butter, jelly.

A _feast_.

"May I have macaroni?" Noelle asked, and Collis smiled. _Manners_.

"You may," she said. "D'you wanna wash your hands while I get it ready?" Kraft Mac-n-Cheese had always been a luxury for Collis growing-up, but now she couldn't stomach the processed cheese powder. She eyed the empty _Gatorade_ bottles, the garbage bag full of wrappers. Her thoughts drifted to the two dead women in the other room, but she winced and slammed that door shut. The stove was still hooked up to the gas mains and she boiled the pasta while showing Noelle how to set the table – she'd said she didn't know how when Collis had asked her. It was surreal, teaching a five-year-old how to set the table when she ate beside a campfire. _Manners_. She'd grown up dirt-poor but even she had eaten every meal at the table with her siblings, hats off, hands washed, whether or not it was foraged mushroom and wild squirrel stew. It was surreal to stand in the gorgeous kitchen full of spices and memos on the refrigerator, the beautiful cherry-red skillet, when she was soaked in sweat from scavenging around the city using an armless, jawless corpse as a mule and camouflage from the dead who would otherwise eat her. Strange that a little girl was humming happily, a tiny freckled cocoa nose appearing at her elbow, watching the steam rise from the saucepan. She was thrown back to her childhood, tiny Bea all but chewing her fingers off for a grilled-cheese sandwich hot off the stove. Bea had been a vibrant redhead like Collis, not a freckled African-American with grey eyes and beautiful lips and the cutest little nose, but she almost swayed, the memory was so powerful, and her stomach hurt.

This was not how she had expected her day to turn out. She wondered briefly how the boys were faring. She didn't know if Daryl being there would be any good for the others, Merle chewed him up worse than he did anyone else. Their relationship was complicated; in a lot of ways Daryl was dependent on Merle because Merle had made Daryl believe he was, that he needed Merle. When they heard she'd found an orphan holed up with enough food to feed a military unit that she wasn't even allowed to cook because she was so tiny, would they laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it? It had to be Fate, proving it still had a sense of humour. She wondered whether Fate recognised her efforts in the past. Why else would _she_ be led to the fire-escape outside Noelle's window? The threads of Fate were being worked together, the old crones sharing their one eye trimming threads and spinning stories. She wondered who watched on, and sat at the edges of their seats.

"You eat your mac-n-cheese, alright," she said quietly.

"Okay," Noelle chirped, her eyes on her meal, making noises almost indecent for the consumption of noodles. Noelle was so little she'd had to lift her onto her chair, she'd bet the little girl still had a booster-seat in the car. How was Collis supposed to look after a child as little as her, when the entire world had conspired against their survival? Well…thinking like that, Collis frowned and rinsed off the saucepan and bowls, put them back in the cupboards, and thought…the odds of her survival now were the same as they had ever been, growing up below the poverty-line with two unstable parents, going out into active warzones. The way she'd come to look at this new development, she was still fighting a war for survival, at least now she had a tangible enemy to slay. Poverty, hunger, those were things she had fought off every day; taking down walkers was easy in comparison. Hunting was in her blood, survival, her instincts were _honed_. Darwin said it, hundreds of years ago, it was the survival of the fittest. Every species went through that; now nature had turned on itself and the dead had risen to consume the living. Only the strongest would survive this.

She had always taken that with a pinch of salt – the fittest survived to protect their young. Noelle had no-one now; and the reason Collis had joined camp in the first place was because she couldn't cross hundreds of miles of hostile territory by herself, to get to scary sons of bitches who could take care of themselves. She'd be in like company – but the ones she'd met up with, Amy and Dale and Jim and the little ones, they were soft. Couldn't hunt, couldn't fight; didn't _want_ to, clinging to the hope they wouldn't _have_ to. They'd wake up tomorrow and this would all be over. That was their hope, and Collis shared it. She eyed Noelle and that hope swelled again, hot inside her chest 'til it hurt. They had to be going through this for a reason. Every catastrophic event in history, no matter how atrocious, natural or manmade, it had always ended. There was a natural start and end to everything. She had to believe the same rule applied to the walkers. For whatever reason they'd risen, surely there had to be a natural end.

And if she achieved nothing today, she'd get Noelle back to camp. The saying was it took a village to raise a baby. In this bleak world, that was certainly going to be the case. If she could get Noelle to the quarry, she might stand a chance.

She washed up the saucepan, Noelle's bowl when she was finished, and Noelle led her into her bedroom. Collis stopped on the threshold. Noelle had shared this bedroom with her big-sister. Noelle's side featured Merida posters, colouring-pages tacked to the walls, stuffed-animals, dolls, a pale-pink CD player and, true to her word, her bed was made.

What made it hard for Collis to breathe, suddenly, was her sister's half of the room. Posters papered the walls, and a memo-board was stuffed with photos, ticket-stubs, magazine clippings; a desk had a binder open with a math textbook, the equations half-finished, Post-It notes stuck inside a copy of _Romeo &amp; Juliet_ and piles of notes highlighted for Biology. A photograph showed Noelle's sister as part of a cheerleading squad in a red and black uniform with silver details, and she had been stunning. There were ribbons from competitions dangling from a bookshelf where novels were organised behind trinkets – glittery snow-globes, little figurines, a jewellery tree – and a jewellery-box issued a tinkling song when Collis opened it. She listened to _The Swan_ from Carnival of the Animals as she opened tiny pots of shimmering MAC eye-shadow. One had a faint well in the centre from use, the lavender-rose colour was stunning, and Collis touched the pad of her ring-finger to the pigment, blending it onto the back of her hand, gold pigments shimmering iridescently in the sunshine pouring in through a beam of light between the curtains. She bet it'd looked amazing against Noelle's sister's skin-tone. She noticed the photographs of Noelle's sister all featured her wearing the same necklace, a tiny gold outline heart glinting with crystals, the delicate gold chain featuring tiny gold dots at intervals along the length. It was the same necklace Noelle now wore over her princess dress, slightly too long for her, obviously an adult piece of jewellery.

Collis had been scavenging the city for weeks, going through people's discarded suitcases, raiding abandoned stores and restaurants, family-planning clinics and office break-rooms. But as she examined the photographs tacked around the mirror, her chest panged so hard she raised a fist to it, kneading hard. She hadn't let it in. They were people. Once, they had been people. Every single walker out there had once been human. Had had lives of their own, people they loved, things they treasured, triggers of memories that made them roar with laughter or wipe tears from their cheeks. They had been _people_. She killed them easily because they threatened her survival, that of the people she'd connected with at camp. They were no longer human – but they had once been. Atlanta, all of Georgia, it was possible the entire _world_ had been overturned by this…this unexplainable, brutal tragedy.

It _hurt_. It hurt thinking that so many people, so many lives had been destroyed. And why? What could possibly have caused, could they have possibly done to deserve this? Nuclear radiation, the effects of the O-zone, deforestation, the dead were surely laughing at them being reliant on fossil-fuel. Because they ate _meat_, what? Battery-farm chickens had caused a worldwide epidemic that threatened to truly wipe out the human race for ever.

People's lives had been destroyed. She had no idea who Noelle's mother and sister were, but even just the way the apartment was decorated, the way Noelle still made her bed every morning though her mother and sister were dead in the next room, reflected on who her mother had been; the photographs on the walls, the sister's eloquent summary of a Scene of _Romeo and Juliet_, her taste in makeup and the movies and books she liked, Noelle's mother's collection of cookbooks…she'd have liked to know these people. Strangers she would never in a million years have ever passed in the street before today, when she was contemplating getting the tiniest member of their family to safety, so she could survive.

It got to her, then. It got to her that these strangers were _gone_. Their lives had been frozen, math equations unfinished, but the dishes washed, a little girl left alone and unprotected. But they'd protected her from themselves, gunshots to the head rather than risk reanimating after the fever took them.

Her head pounded, her eyes burned, and Collis clutched her aching chest. It _hurt_. She hadn't let it in. Couldn't. But Noelle's mother and sister had snuck up on her and she'd…let it in. It was too senseless, too familiar – little girl, no mom. Big-sister dead. Left to look after herself.

She choked on a sob, and pressed her fingers to her eyes to stop the burning, stop the tears, not wanting to scare Noelle. She couldn't think about it – couldn't think about Amelia, her dad; couldn't think about Bea and her nephew, or Ephraim, or her favourite cousin and her now-teenaged daughter in the Ozarks; couldn't dwell on her friends overseas any more than she ever let herself. Couldn't dwell on the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who had been lost to the walkers. Good lives, innocent ones, hard-working, beautiful people, destroyed.

She exhaled slowly, counting, but her eyes still burned and it didn't matter. She was upset; seeing Noelle's mother and sister had struck home with her in a way no amount of walkers had managed.

Noelle was orphaned. And so little, in years to come she wouldn't remember joy with her big-sister, her mother's hugs. Sitting at the dinner-table with them, listening to the _Tangled_ soundtrack while her big-sister did Geometry and watched _How to Train Your Dragon 2_ and got pretty for parties with shimmery eye-shadows. She wouldn't remember her mother and sister. She was too young – Collis hadn't been too young; she remembered. And it hurt; but wouldn't it hurt Noelle, in years to come, when Collis explained she'd taken the little girl from her home where her sister and mother were decomposing, taken her to a quarry-side camp where strangers were scratching at survival. Taken her from her memories, her _home_. The place filled with her mother's and sister's faces. She eyed the tiny girl carefully arranging her stuffed-animals in the corner by an armchair draped with shimmering t-shirts and dark denims, books, magazines.

"Noelle, where's your clothes?" she asked, and Noelle showed her the closet, half of it filled with mini clothes, the other, with gorgeous clothes she'd have envied when she was still a teenager. A red 1950s-style flare dress hung from a hanger, the same one as Noelle's sister had worn in a photograph from her high-school homecoming. If she could, if she thought there was ever a chance Noelle might one day wear it, Collis would've boxed up that dress and taken it with her. As it was, she went through Noelle's half of the closet and picked out enough clothing that they could account for seasonal weather, accidents and extended laundry cycles. She tucked them up so small and tight, and found a duffel in the bottom of her mother's closet, where she found some plain long-sleeved tops to her taste that would fit her. It didn't feel the same, taking clothes from her closet, eyeing the shimmering t-shirts and blinged out jeans belonging to Noelle's sister, the way she'd had no qualms raiding abandoned suitcases.

But she had to do it, and one day she might be able to tell Noelle, your sister wore that t-shirt in pictures taken with her friends. She read Neil Gaiman books, was terrible at Geometry, liked dragons and had probably tried to read _Game of Thrones_ after watching the TV show, had lots of friends, was very active at her school, liked listening to _Paloma Faith_ and very old-school songstresses like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James. She'd liked shimmery eye-shadows in pinks, lilacs and warm mocha colours, could put false eyelashes on; she liked _Disney_ and had a killer shoe-collection of awesome Converses, Vans, wellies and velvet Doc Martens. If any of that would even matter. She glanced back at little Noelle. One day, hopefully, she would get bigger. She would grow up. A teenager. And between then and now there would be few chances to go clothes-shopping as she outgrew her clothes. So Collis picked out t-shirts and packed denims from Rachael's side of the closet. She stuffed a duffel full of clothes for Noelle, with winter boots and wellies, a fur-trimmed khaki coat, pyjamas, hair-ties, the princess Band-Aids, extra tubes of toothpaste, spare princess toothbrushes and clean washcloths from the bathroom, found the _Brave_ sleeping-bag in a cupboard and rolled Noelle's pillow and sheets, comforter and extra blanket inside it. She'd stuffed another duffel with as much food as she could carry and tied them together before she climbed back down the fire-escape to load the walker with – she might have to get another, especially with Noelle, although controlling two walkers while trying to keep a hold of a five-year-old posed its own problems.

She paused as she watched Noelle sitting on the sofa, waiting, gazing thoughtfully at the tiny sparkling heart draped around her neck.

She turned back into the bedroom she had shared with her sister, to the desk where Rachael – Noelle said her sister's name was Rachael, her mama's name had been Tamsin – did her homework. She carefully took photographs off the memo-board, out of frames in the living-room, her mother's bedroom. She secured them in a _Ziploc_ baggie and tucked them into her money-belt. She couldn't leave all these photographs here when Noelle would grow up forgetting what her mother and sister looked like, who they were, what her family had been like. She should at least know that they had been beautiful – that they had put themselves down rather than putting her at risk.

"Come on, Miss Lady," she said softly. "You any good at climbin' outta windows?"

"I don't know," Noelle said, sitting up with a bright smile, clambering off the sofa. She had a sparkly Merida backpack strapped to her back, with her precious things and spare underwear at Collis' insistence, snacks, a sweater, a flashlight and a matchbook.

"Well, we'll find out," she smiled softly. Then she squatted down in front of her. "There's some rules before we go out there, though. We have to keep quiet like mice out there, 'cause the walkers like noise. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hide, you get underneath the nearest car. Don't come out 'til I come get you. Don't scream, and don't cry. Can you do that?"

"I'll try," Noelle said sombrely. Collis nodded.

"Alright. Out the window, then." Absurdly, a quote from Professor Dumbledore struck her, _Let us pursue that flighty temptress, adventure_.

Oh, if only Horcruxes were her only problem.

* * *

**A.N.**: And I'm going to introduce another character in the next chapter who will be a useful addition. Unlike, say, Shane, who is a testosterone-fuelled, arrogant halfwit with a truly heinous haircut. I mean, you know you're short on people so you decide to have a barbecue rather than keep watch?! *This point _will_ be addressed, worry not.


	5. A Pacifier

**A.N.**: Shit. Sorry, guys. I forgot to account for the prologue when I was counting chapters before I uploaded. Serves me right! But here, the _correct_ chapter update. At least you know there's another ready to be uploaded in time!

Thank you to everyone who's reviewed this story so far, I really appreciate all the enthusiasm. If you're interested, I started a Pinterest board for this story, it's called _Walking Dead – Collis_. BTW, I made _Brave_ Noelle's favourite princess because I cannot fathom why people think Anna and Elsa can even hold a flame to the old girls, like Mulan, Pocahontas, Merida, even _Lilo_.

The next instalment.

* * *

**Our Deepest Fear**

_04_

_A Pacifier_

* * *

It must have looked extremely odd, even comical, to anyone who might've caught a glimpse of them. A tacticool redhead guiding an armless walker-mule loaded with her scavenged goods, and a little African-American girl in a princess dress holding her hand, sucking her thumb. Surreal. It felt surreal, and a little comical, to be guiding the unusual pairing to the University of Atlanta campus. She didn't have to head over to the dormitory block, could've stolen a car and left the city with Noelle. But it was important to her to do it. Because she could. And Noelle had to learn quickly.

There was a proliferation of dead bodies collecting flies on the lawn; the park had been relatively empty of walkers, and it was the noise that made her go on alert as they approached the building she needed. A loud chiming, clacking, metallic grinding that set her teeth on edge – and drew every walker on campus, it seemed.

Someone had built a weighted turbine powering a kind of demented carousel – tucked inside a cage, it was protected from walkers while it taunted them. Someone very capable had built that. Collis paused and stared. Noelle glanced up at her curiously; there were dozens of walkers all trying to chase a ghost inside that caged noise-maker. And Collis was impressed. Not just by the carousel, but by Noelle; an uncertain glance up at Collis was the only indication of her nerves. She didn't squeal, didn't whimper or scream or shiver back and hide behind Collis' legs. She'd first seen the walker Collis had neutralised and frowned up at it thoughtfully, eying the packs Collis had draped on it. Collis had explained how taking off its arms and jaw made it so that it couldn't feed, which meant it was safe to keep around, and it camouflaged them from other walkers. Noelle had thought this over, then asked if camouflaged meant like Pascal from _Tangled_. The chameleon who changed colours and had more personality, oomph and screen-presence than Elsa, in Collis' opinion; she'd taken Nicki's nieces to see _Tangled_ – and then dragged Nicki to see it because she'd spent the first time making sure the girls didn't run up the aisles or throw up their _Milk Duds_.

Well, at least Noelle was a clever kindergartner, she knew what _camouflage_ meant, even if she thought a chameleon turned the same colour when it ate an orange wedge. She hadn't started crying at the sight of the walker, or its festering stumps and gaping jaw. Collis didn't want her to have to live in a world where she saw things like that but it was the world they were living in now. Noelle wasn't afraid; she was _thoughtful_, but she remembered Collis' rules about keeping silent like mice, and had kept hold of Collis' hand.

She turned away toward the Rawlins Building. There were more dead bodies here, and this made her more anxious than those walkers; soldiers, and girls in cheerleading vests, college kids and professors, a few cops. All killed assassin-style with a shot to the head after someone had wasted a lot of bullets shooting any part they could, bullet-holes riddled clothes and bare-legs, decomposing on the lawns beside "Keep Off" signs and geometric pathways between buildings sprayed with blood, the grime she associated with walkers. Flowerbeds glowed brilliantly in a rainbow of colours, petals flickering in a subtle breeze, bees humming. The bright fuchsia geraniums looked odd beside festering bodies. Someone had massacred the residents before the walkers had overrun it, though. Noelle's knuckles were white where she clutched Collis' hand but she didn't make a sound as she tiptoed around a few bodies Collis couldn't avoid. She gave Noelle a reassuring but obviously grim smile, scanning the student parking-lot. A few expensive cars, some moderately-priced hybrids, an old pickup. _Perfect_, she thought, eyeing it up. That was their ride home, soon as she got what she needed.

"Alright, Noelle, I want you to stay here," she said quietly, when they had reached the front entrance, where tall potted jasmines guarded the courtyard. There were no walkers – she could hear the carousel from here and it was eerie – but it was shady in one corner, there were flowers blooming in the beds amongst bark-chips – she had always wondered _why_ they did that – and there was a concrete bench she sat Noelle on, tying the walker to the metal frame of a trashcan nearby.

"What are you going to do?" Noelle asked in a hushed voice.

"I'm gonna go inside, clear the dorm so you can come in," she said softly, eyeing the bloodstains on the concrete. An idea niggled in the back of her mind; someone had tried to scrub them. Whoever had died here, there were no bodies. It was…_tranquil_, with the shade, the breeze, the flowers, only the screeching of the carousel obliterated the illusion.

Someone had cleaned up the courtyard, set a trap to distract the walkers away from the building. She eyed the dormitory, placing a fingertip to her eye. "Keep a sharp eye. I'll come get you when it's okay to come in."

Noelle smiled so sweetly for a moment. Then asked, frowning, "What if more monsters come?"

"Stick close to ours," Collis said gently. "But don't be afraid. Don't make a sound."

"What if they come after you?"

"I'll kill 'em," Collis said plainly.

"'Kay," Noelle nodded.

"Sit on that bench, okay, and don't move 'til I come out for you." Noelle nodded again, thumb back in her mouth. Once upon a time, the dorm had been protected by keycard locking systems; now, it didn't take Collis any effort to get inside. And it was odd. Stifling and bright, but there was no hum of electricity; there were fliers everywhere, on the memo-boards, photos, reminders for socials; a large rec-room with a huge TV and a mini-kitchen made her stop, frowning. Someone had tried to scrub bloodstains off the walls, the carpets, even the sofas; now they were faded, but there were cots, huge bins full of supplies, sleeping-bags all rolled up next to each other – none were uniform, either. Pink, lizard-patterned, old plaid, expensive thermal-technology ones lined with fleece. It was silent, bright, eerie – frozen in time, and full of details Collis couldn't read because she didn't know the history. Everything was neat, and she frowned disconcertedly at the camping gear. Why hadn't these supplies been scavenged by city-bound survivors? Surely if a five-year-old could do it, there were others?

Each shared dorm had its door open a little, enough for her to feel that open windows coaxed a gentle breeze in. It…didn't smell like _death_. She crept down each hall, peeking into rooms. Lives had been abandoned, video-games cut short by bullets shattering the plasma, assignments never read, photographs from parties never uploaded from purple digital cameras. Collis had never been to college. But peering into the girls' dorm-rooms she could see Amy here, easily. _This_ had been her life. And it looked like her long-anticipated road-trip with Andrea had saved her life. There were blood-stains in every room. Someone had done their best to clean up but they hadn't tried to scrub the blood out of bed-linens and carpets the way the rec-room had been cleared up. Too much, she supposed. Someone house-proud – or sorrowful, someone who had known the girls who lived here – had tidied up the dorm. Because they had to live here.

So she knew when she heard the tiniest of noises, knew there was a living person tracking behind her as quietly as they could – but that was their mistake, her senses were too honed, her experience hunting and in warzones never more relevant than right now. Walkers would've made her react without hesitation, but as it was, she was cautious, and curious. She didn't let on, but continued down the hall – she turned a corner, noting the emergency fire-axe, and palming her hunting KA-BAR and her _Smith &amp; Wesson_ as she pressed herself quietly against the wall, eyeing the single figure reflected in the glass of the axe casing. Fair hair and a rifle. She quickly holstered the _Smith &amp; Wesson_ and was poised, so that she knocked the barrel up toward the ceiling, tugged it out of un-practiced hands and slammed the girl against the wall with her body-weight, forearm at her throat, knife-point angled to the point just under her jaw by her ear.

"Next time, shoot first," she said softly. The girl's profile was striking, her perfectly-groomed taupe eyebrows were dramatic, and she looked like she was holding her breath. A person was statistically less likely to put up a fight when confronted with a knife, rather than a gun.

"I saw the little girl," she gasped, trying to peer around at Collis. "Would've turned the pacifier off otherwise, let 'em have you."

"Pacifier? The carousel?" Collis frowned, then felt her lips twitch. At least she had a sense of humour. "You can turn it off?"

"'Course," the girl said quietly. "I helped build it."

"At least you're better with mechanics than Kates," she said. The girl turned, looking…shaken. She couldn't be out of her teens yet, ash-blonde and striking, wearing a slinky racer-back tank, frayed jeans and a sporty asymmetric bob. The delicate glint of a tiny gold septum-ring and a tinier gold stud decorated her elegant nose, and a fierce frown gave her all the makeup she needed. "Where did you get the rifle?"

"We picked up a bunch, after…" she said softly.

"You ever shot it before?"

"Often enough."

"But you're no sniper," Collis concluded.

"No. I'm a college sophomore. I _was_," she said. A pained wince flashed across her face.

"What are you now?" Collis asked. For a moment, the girl didn't answer. Then she winced again and stared hard at nothing. Collis could see her eyes swimming, but the girl didn't let her tears fall. She sniffed loudly.

"I'm the last one left," she said hoarsely, and Collis stared at her.

"You cleaned up the blood." The girl's jaw muscle ticked, and she tried to nod, but froze when the knife-point pressed against her skin. On a decision, Collis frowned, and stepped away, sheathing her KA-BAR at the same time. She kept hold of the rifle, though. The girl shuddered violently, a reaction to shock at being held at knife-point, but turned and stared at her. She was shorter than Collis by barely a couple inches, lean and beautiful, but she looked very tired, dark circles under her deep-blue eyes, and _young_, so young! Collis could remember being that young, that tired, that terrified.

"How long have you been here?"

"You mean alone. A couple weeks," the girl said, on a heavy sigh. "A few of us escaped, when they came. The soldiers."

"Soldiers?" Collis frowned behind her sunglasses.

"Yeah. Crowded campus and started massacring everyone," she said, and her voice seemed tight with emotion.

"Not you."

"I…my dorm's furthest from the stairs. Everyone…who ran out the fire-escape…" She winced and twitched, and for a moment true _desolation_ made her features stark. "I heard the shots and…" She laughed suddenly, without humour. "I hid under the bed."

"And after? You said the ones who escaped…"

"You're not the first person to come on campus without an I.D.," the girl said, with a bite of irony that made Collis' lips twitch even at the sight of the girl's drawn, pale face. But she frowned.

"There've been others?"

"They always come in groups," she said quietly. "And we held them off, for a long time. Even the ones who came armed to the teeth. The cops."

"Cops?!" Collis blurted, a little stunned, and the girl nodded with a scowl.

"They rolled up in black cars marked with white crosses," she said, with an impatient sigh. "Shot three of us and then wondered why we set the walkers on them when they asked the rest of us to come with them."

"How d'you know they were cops, not just thugs wearin' stolen uniforms. Not that vests would do much good these days," Collis said softly.

"Against the other humans still alive," the girl said. "The ones we managed to get, they saved our lives a handful of times… But I know _cops_. I can spot one a mile off." She had the kind of nasty tone that made Collis nostalgic for her mountain, where everybody loathed and disdained the police. The mountain had been a law unto itself long before a sheriff had set himself up.

"So you lost friends to other groups survivin' here in the city?" Collis prompted, and the girl nodded.

"Yeah. Some…were bitten," she said, wincing again. "Some just…didn't want to keep fighting."

"Is that what you're doing here, fighting?"

"If I hadn't seen that little girl with you I'd've turned off the pacifier and let the walkers have you," the girl said.

"I appreciate your honesty," Collis said.

"Your turn. Why are you here?" the girl asked, and the set of her shoulders, the stern upward tilt of her jaw, the uncompromising eye-contact despite Collis' sunglasses, made Collis think quickly.

"Got some things to collect."

"You don't live here," she said coldly.

"No. Know someone who did, though, 'fore the shit hit the fan. She got caught outside the city when it did, with her sister," Collis said quietly, glancing down the corridor. She needed room 310. The 'terrible triple', a double room with a third cot squashed in, a room that made either lifelong friendships or bitter rivalries, according to Amy. She missed her best-friends. "I'll be fillin' a pack and be on my way."

"Just like that?" the girl said, arching one of those dramatic eyebrows.

"Jus' like that," Collis repeated calmly.

"How're you gonna get out of the city?" the girl asked.

"Truck," Collis shrugged delicately.

"The roads are full of walkers," the girl said.

"Drive fast enough they lose interest," Collis shrugged a shoulder delicately. "Happens every time. Did you and your friends not try to leave?"

"'Course we did. That's how we lost a couple," the girl said quietly. "If we went out on runs we tried to scout a route out of the city, but…there were just more and more of them. Eventually we decided just to cut our losses, make this place…well, it was _home_ before…"

"What is it now?"

"Now, it's just…a place where all my friends were murdered," the girl said. "Which room do you need?"

"Three-ten," Collis said, and the girl frowned.

"Why that room?"

"Girl I know, that's her dorm. Amy."

"_You_ know Amy? She's alive?" the girl blurted, eyes popping.

"Was this morning," Collis said. "She's running low on clothes. Bored."

"I thought Amy was on a road-trip for spring-break," the girl frowned. "Wasn't she with her sister?"

"Andrea? Yeah, they're both okay," Collis shrugged. The girl looked like she was doing some quick-thinking. "If you don't mind, the longer we're here chattin' the less likely I am to get out the city, so –"

"How will you get out? You're gonna steal a car?"

"There's an entire lot full of 'em."

"Won't get far without the starters." Collis paused. The tone had been just smug enough to make her lips twitch, even though she heard the threat.

"You took the starters?"

"Only way to stop them getting stolen for parts," she shrugged. "'Specially 'cause _I _needed the parts."

"For the pacifier." It wasn't a question. The girl shrugged. "None of 'em are roadworthy?"

"I can give you the starter for that old Silverado."

"With the utility trailer? Why would you offer?"

"'Cause you have a kid. And I'm coming with you." Collis chuckled darkly.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"But – _why_?"

"Because you're the last one left," Collis said quietly. "How do I know you didn't take out your friends? Like you said, I've got a kid to look after."

"I'm the last one left because I'm smarter than the others. I know how to shoot, I've taken self-defence classes since I was fourteen, I'm the only female mechanic at this school, and they never gave me credit."

"Still doesn't tell me you won't turn on the group."

"At least give me the chance to prove I won't. Okay, I'm valuable – I _built_ that pacifier. You show me your camp, I can help protect it. I've got a tonne of weapons your friends could probably use. And I've got food. _Please_, just…give me a chance." Collis sighed internally, staring at the girl.

"There's no guarantee you'll be any safer out there with us than in here alone. You could wait it out here."

"I've got a good chance of being found and murdered for what I've got, or worse. So far, I've only seen bad ones surviving," the girl said. "And I don't want to sit here by myself trying to wait it out. You're the first person I've talked to in nearly three weeks. I'll go crazy before I get bitten."

"You could just head out on your own," Collis suggested. "You're not from around here." The girl's accent was very mild; she'd guess West Coast.

"Outside Atlanta there's no-one left I'd care to search out," the girl said with a fierce scowl. "I came here on scholarship two years ago. Atlanta's more my home than anywhere's ever been – the only people I cared about were here – now they're _gone_. Look, I'm not asking you to hold my hand, alright, and I'll pull my own weight. I'm just asking you for one chance."

Collis thought for a moment, reflecting… She'd asked the same thing of someone a long time ago. If they hadn't given her the chance, she wouldn't be here. She wouldn't be who she was. "How many walkers have you killed?"

"Nearly two dozen," the girl said.

"That many?"

"You don't think I could?"

"You're givin' attitude to the wrong person," Collis said quietly. The girl flushed slightly. Collis watched her reaction carefully when she asked, "How many people have you killed?"

"Two. For certain. More, maybe, I don't know. Never killed a stranger up close," she said, and Collis frowned.

"You killed friends?"

"They were bitten. Tommy, he…he lost his arm, they tore it off before we could help him… They couldn't do it themselves. Asked one of us to do it. I drew the black spot out of the hat," she said quietly, and then flinched as if Collis had struck her. "We all thought that was fairer on everyone. Tommy called it a really twisted secret Santa. Idiot." A sudden and devastating smile lit up her face, but her eyes glinted with tears. The _pacifier_, a warped secret Santa, she had a sense of humour despite everything, she was creative, clever, resourceful. She had drawn the short straw to kill two of her friends, and felt sorrow for them, amusement at memories of who they had been.

"Would you kill again?"

"If it was me or them."

"You didn't let the walkers have me."

"You had a little kid with you."

"And if I hadn't?"

"I might've let you onto campus. You strolled past those walkers out by the pacifier without turning a hair," she said, and her eyes were dry again. "I let you live. Will you do me the same favour?"

Collis sighed. She'd already wondered about letting a teenager stay here by herself, with no-one to watch her back, no-one to confide in, share the burden. And she got a bad feeling when she thought of the groups this girl had come across, the ones who made her think she'd end up worse than dead if the dorm was overrun. She was a young, beautiful girl who had no-one. That didn't sit right with her, she'd just…needed to get a feel for who she was. "What supplies do you have?"

"Tonnes! Nurse's office was stuffed full over spring-break, we raided the cafeteria, a bunch of supermarkets nearby when there were still enough of us. And weapons. I'm not a gun enthusiast but I've got enough for a militia," she said.

"Will it fit into that utility-trailer, the truck?"

"If you take a smart pick."

"You got a bag ready?"

"Um… No." Collis nodded. She retreated back outside, found Noelle swinging her legs on the bench, escorted her upstairs; the girl waited for them inside the foyer and guided them upstairs to her own dorm-room. Collis took the opportunity to get a feel for who the girl had been before the shit hit the fan. Her half of the dorm was very neat; she had no pillow on her bed, made up with textured white linens; there was a neon green soccer-ball by her bedside cabinet, a few neatly-framed photographs on the desk, which was meticulously neat, and the shelf was arranged with an alphabetised collection of novels – _Wars of the Roses - Stormbird_, _Anna Karenina_, _Troilus &amp; Cressida_, _Just William_, _Gulliver's Travels_, a complete _Lord of the Rings_ book, _The Colour of Magic_, among others – a _Game of Thrones_ calendar paper-clipped with loose photos and annotated with soccer games, socials and deadlines was hung on the wall beside a _Saturday Night Fever_ poster, and three unusual masks were hung beside it. A pen-pot full of eyeliners and mascara-wands, tinted lip-balms, a small light-bronze powder and a small black tub of _Lush_ cleanser balm seemed like her only cosmetics, and Collis smiled internally at the three-drawer plastic organiser full of _Mr Clean Magic Erasers_, packets of apple-pie flavoured gum, _Teddy Grahams_ and nail-polish bottles. Like Noelle, this girl still made her bed.

She was clean, organised; she liked to read; those masks were interesting; she didn't seem to have a lot of _stuff_; she seemed to have been on the school's soccer team; her photographs were of the same boy or a group of friends who laughed so hard in pictures they were crying. She seemed to live in short-shorts with Converses, plaid shirts, leggings, whimsical floral skirts, plain V-neck t-shirts, unassuming dresses with very interesting details, frayed jeans and combat-boots. Not entirely a tomboy; a young-woman who knew who she was, what she liked and didn't feel pressured to pretend she liked anything else. But she seemed uncertain now that Collis was in her room, eyeing her things, even if Collis still had her shades on, concealing her eyes.

"So…what's your daughter's name?" she asked, with a friendly smile down at Noelle, who was drawn straight to the other half of the room, which was colourful and punky and feminine, where unusual _Irregular Choice_ heels peeked out from the mess of screwed-up clothes just dumped on the floor, colourful bras dangling off the bedpost, makeup and CDs piled everywhere, steamy beach-reads piled on the floor. Collis glanced back at the girl, blinking.

"My–? Oh. Noelle's not my daughter. Just found her an hour ago," Collis said, and Noelle nodded eagerly as she snickered and smirked at a dark-red satin push-up bra.

"You–?"

"Weird day," Collis said lightly, shrugging a delicate shoulder. "This is Noelle. I'm Collis. Guess we should learn your name. What d'you want us to call you?"

The girl sighed heavily. "Freya. My name's Freya." Collis nodded.

"Okay. We should get you packed. You got a duffel or anything?"

"I got my gym bag?" Freya said uncertainly. She reached under her bed, dragging out a large black gym-bag, perfect for what they needed. "So… I don't know what I even need to pack. I've never even been on vacation before."

"You said you moved to Atlanta for college. Didn't you pack then?" Collis asked. Freya frowned.

"I didn't have enough _to_ pack. Couple t-shirts, underwear and soccer-cleats," she shrugged. "I didn't even have an MP3 player back then."

"Rachael's iPod is _pink_," Noelle chirped from the other bed, where she was examining several glossy magazines. She popped her thumb back in her mouth, and upturned a little container full of nail-polishes and perfume bottles.

"You tryin' to fumigate us?" Collis asked, reaching forward to take the bottles away from her as she proceeded to spray every single perfume-bottle, creating a cloud of Estee Lauder, _Flora_, Diptyque, Tom Ford, _Daisy_, _Black Opium_, Christina Aguilera and _OneDirection_. "You're gonna do more damage than Hiroshima with all these fumes."

"I don't know what that is," Noelle said, gazing up at her, and Freya chuckled softly across the room.

"Sit on your hands, pet," Collis instructed, and Noelle half did what she was told, sticking her thumb back into her mouth and sitting on her other hand, eyeing the colourful array of nail-polish bottles, especially the glittery _Butter_ ones. Nicki's sister had liked those, too, Collis remembered with a twist to her gut. _Manicures_ – they'd sit at the kitchen-table with _Scrabble_, _Roseanne_ reruns on the television, music playing quietly, barefoot in their slob outfits, eating Mexican takeout, drinking too many margaritas, painting their nails. "Alright… What clothes do you have?"

She wished she could've packed Amy's suitcase for a road-trip-turned-apocalyptic-campout.

"I like your style," she said honestly, as she helped Freya go through her closet and drawers. She had quirky t-shirts printed with pop-culture references, camouflage, cotton jerseys, fitted shorts, dark plaid and pale floral-patterned long-sleeved shirts, she suited the neckline of the short-sleeved Henley tops Collis rolled up tight, dark and translucent, the drawstring khaki hooded coat. She tucked a pair of hiking boots, an extra pair of Converses and some broken-in combat-boots into the bottom of Freya's gym-bag, adding two pairs of pyjamas rolled up so tight.

"Thanks," Freya smiled warmly, as she rolled up a thermal top with embroidered cuffs, leggings, a few sports-bras. "So, um… What's it like? Where you are?"

"It's okay," Collis said quietly. "We're all strangers, really. Just a few families, individuals, we all met up at the quarry, just…came together. We've got a camp, we keep watch, come into the city when we need somethin'…otherwise we just rub along. You got a strong backpack or somethin'? Fill it with books and entertainment. Wouldn't believe how much time you spend on your ass. You said you take self-defence, any of the work you do involve knives or guns?"

"Some knife-work," Freya nodded. "I went to the range a lot when I was sixteen, but I never had my own gun."

"You find any you particularly like?"

"I don't particularly like weapons," Freya sighed. "I know I'm gonna need them, I've already had to use them, against _people_, not even just walkers. But I don't… I don't know…"

"Don't worry about not likin' 'em," Collis said quietly. "I don't, particularly. They've just always been essential, least in my life. Protect your family. More important, put food on the table."

"Collis?" Noelle spoke up, removing her thumb from her mouth with a wet _pop_. Collis glanced over her shoulder.

"Yeah, pet?" she asked.

"Can I have these?" Noelle asked; she indicated a large translucent purple tub she'd pulled out from under the bed, the lid prised off and revealing a supply of kid-friendly stuff.

"What's all that?"

"Zoey nannied for a family a few blocks away," Freya said quietly. "She was with them… The kids were like twelve, seven and five…they're in the photos. Sometimes I'd babysit if Zoey couldn't do it. Sweet kids. There's another couple boxes like that under the bed, and in her car. We can get them, if you want."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Zoey wouldn't mind," Freya shrugged slightly. She eyed the slump of Freya's shoulders, the pained wince on her face, the glint to her eyes.

"Were you close with your roommate?" Collis asked carefully.

"Yeah," she mumbled, then sniffed, wiped her fingers under her eyes, and cleared her throat as she shoved socks and a stuffed toiletries bag into her gym-bag.

"Hey, don't forget to pack winter-hats and scarves, that kinda thing," Collis advised. "Swimsuit, and a beach-towel, if you're precious about modesty."

"Got it," Freya nodded, looking mildly alarmed for a second. Leaving Freya with instructions to finish putting her gym-bag and backpack together and start making her way upstairs, going through each of the dorm-rooms for anything useful – batteries, medicine, snacks, decent books – Collis took Noelle upstairs to room 310, Amy's dorm. It was so clear which part of the room was hers, it was girly and pretty, a little young, and she'd left her bed rumpled, there were photographs _everywhere_. And Collis was surprised: Amy's textbooks were all on _medicine_. Her class schedule, pinned to the wall, was a full, heavy load, Collis didn't know enough about college or medicine to know what half the course titles were, but she felt a little bad she was so surprised to find that Amy was studying medicine. She'd expected French, or child psychology or something…something… _Useless_. Something Amy enjoyed, but not something heavy like medicine. And she had never asked Amy what she was studying.

Collis produced one of the packs she had scavenged from a dead soldier in the street and started going through Amy's drawers and part of the closet, filling it with clothes, and the kinds of things Amy had confessed to Collis that she really missed just having around her. Photographs of her parents; the tiny glittering _Little Mermaid_ snow-globe on her bedside cabinet she'd gotten from _Disney World_ when she was twelve, the last time Andrea had come on the family-vacation; her pretty pink _Benefit Cosmetics_ bag full of SPF tinted moisturiser and concealer, lip-balm and tooth-floss; her glittery glow-in-the-dark pink retainers. She went through Amy's textbooks and found several on 'survival' medical-care. She did have to laugh at the _Ultimate Survivor in a Bottle_ kit, unopened and still with the tags on, stuffed in the bottom-drawer of Amy's desk. But a bigger plastic bin was full of emergency medical supplies, things Collis could only recall from her time as the patient in surgical theatres with shudders.

The medical textbooks didn't fit in with the glittery Ariel snow-globe, Collis realised she shouldn't feel too awkward about not piecing _doctor_ and _Amy_ together. Like Collis, people probably looked at Amy and underestimated her. She packed Amy's iridescent, diamante-embellished, patterned t-shirts, long-sleeved tops, lace-trimmed patterned yoga-leggings and skinny-jeans, her powder-pink _UoA_ sweatshirt, sky-blue zipper hoodie and trench-coat, a pretty floral pashmina shawl, a knitted beanie and gloves, her navy-and-pink gym sneakers, extra socks and underwear into the pack, with whatever she could find in the en-suite bathroom, whether it had been Amy's or her roommates. She found Amy's backpack, and rolled her eyes. It was a _Little Mermaid_ one she'd found in _Hot Topic_. She found Amy's hoard of snacks, _Pepto-Bismol_, _Motrin_, the antibiotics she'd had for an illness over Christmas, throat-drops, Kleenex, her no-kink hair-elastics and the hanging organiser in her closet, flat-packing it.

"_The Last Song_?" a voice spoke up, and Collis glanced up from the books she was packing into Amy's backpack.

"It has Liam Hemsworth on the cover," Collis smiled. "Amy's a drooling mess when it comes to the Hemsworth brothers."

"Aren't we all?" Freya grinned. Her eyes were drawn to the pile of books Collis had gathered from amongst Amy's magazines and schoolbooks. _The Last Song_, _The Beautiful and Damned_, _The Great Gatsby_, _Gone with the Wind_, _Atonement_ – they were on Amy's list to read, apparently, she'd just never gotten round to reading them. She hadn't made the time to read them.

"Thought you were raiding the other rooms?" Collis said, glancing at Freya as she packed the last of the books into Amy's backpack, piling everything else on top. The heaviest, bulkiest items always went on the bottom.

"I have. They're small rooms! All the stuff I think's worth taking is on the beds, I wanted to know if you wanted to do a sweep, I've got all the plastic tubs emptied and ready," Freya said. With Noelle's help, they raided the dorm-rooms. Drugs, Band-Aids and untouched First Aid kits pressed on teenagers by their anxious parents anticipating power-outages, minor hurricanes and drunken accidents; a tonne of toiletries, Sharpies, _Ziploc_ baggies, batteries, hair-ties and other hair things, hand-sanitisers, matches and candles, flashlights, a solar-powered rechargeable-battery kit.

"You're smiling," Freya remarked, as they packed the fifth plastic tub full of things – they'd packed the food first, Collis amazed college girls could accumulate quite so much, even after Freya and her dozen survivor friends had lived off the stuff.

"I guess I enjoy scavenging," she said, shrugging without contrition. She did enjoy it. She enjoyed the thought of going back to camp and seeing people's faces when she told them they could charge Amy's iPad to let the kids watch movies in the RV. That they had Aspirin for headaches and after-sun, Band-Aids and hair-ties. Simple things, like the flashlights. The boxes of Pop-Tarts, mini-bottles of liquor, new books. Entertainment and food kept them going.

"Did you…did you take anything for you?" Freya asked guiltily, and Collis glanced at her. Her expression probably said a lot. She dug into the pocket of her pack and drew out a bottle of _Butter London_ 'Melt Away Cuticle Eliminator', a glass file and nail-buffer.

"You don't strike me as someone who likes manicures."

"What makes you say that?" Collis asked, still packing one of the tubs. Freya shrugged slightly.

"I mean, you're in the military, right?" she guessed. "I mean…your hair, your clothes…"

"I was in the Marine Corps, yes," Collis nodded. "But before that, I did whatever I had to, to look after my family. Baking and sellin' at the high-school, hunting. My mama was a trained beautician. Used our front-room as her parlour, nearly everyone on the mountain came by our house to gossip and get their brows threaded. She taught me… An' I like to take care of my hands. Don't get half so many hangnails if you've pushed back your cuticles and filed and buffed your nails. I hate stingin' fingers."

"That makes sense," Freya nodded, eyeing her own fingernails. They finished packing the last of the tubs and Noelle trailed after them as Collis and Freya carried them downstairs, creating a pile in the courtyard where her armless, jawless mule was still leashed to the trashcan. Freya's jaw dropped, horrified, but she set her tubs down with a load groan and retreated back inside without comment. "You wanna look at the food and weapons now?"

"Yeah, we should get that stored on the truck first," Collis nodded, glad everything was boxed up already, at least the food. The weapons were all stored in one of the common rooms. She blinked. "You weren't kidding about arming a militia." Collis went through the weapons available, picking out handguns, rifles, shotguns, she delighted in the handful of silencers. There were knives, hatchets, and she smashed the glass to reach the fire-axes on each floor.

"It makes me kinda nervous thinking about leaving half this stuff here, just lying around," she said quietly. "All these guns…"

"That's easily sorted," Collis said, and showed Freya how to remove the firing pin, making the guns useless. "Y'know, there's not too many of us that we'd need all this. Biggest issue we have is lack of training, and lack of ammunition."

"Oh, there's tonnes of that," Freya said quietly, indicating a couple huge plastic bins, which Collis opened and stared into.

"Well, that's that," she said quietly. There were boxes upon boxes of assorted rounds. "There anything else you want to bring with you?"

"My tools," Freya said, and Collis glanced around; Freya had one of those huge, shiny red multi-drawer tool-cases, full of tools. They had to attach a bungee cord around the chest to make sure the drawers didn't pop open mid-journey, and Collis reconnected the starter Freya had given her, reversing the old dark-navy 1980s Silverado and trailer into the courtyard before either Noelle or Freya could get anxious.

_Weird day_, Collis thought, as she helped load Freya's tool-chest onto the utility-trailer, with the three huge, full tanks of propane Freya's group had found and hoarded, the numerous plastic bins and tubs. Noelle's things and Freya's they put in the bed of the truck with two tents, extra sleeping-bags, a couple Igloo ice-chests. Her jawless, armless mule was straining against the trashcan, restless at their nearness. Freya eyed it uncertainly, but Noelle was perfectly complacent as she sucked her thumb, perched on the edge of the seat in the cab, swinging her legs, cuddling a shaggy sloth plush toy she had found in a dorm-room belonging to an animal-lover.

"I just wanna raid those cars in the lot before we head out," she said, glancing up. She removed her sunglasses and gauged the true colour of the sky, glancing at her watch. "We've got about an hour of daylight left, we should get going soon."

She headed out to the lot with her walker, who deflected the couple walkers who wandered off toward Freya's _pacifier_, and forty minutes later was internally beaming as she carried a _Goal Zero_ Yeti 150 solar generator back to the truck. And the sight of Noelle playing Snap with Freya on the courtyard bench made her smile. Freya glanced up. Her eyes flitted from Collis to around her, frowning subtly. Collis had dispatched the walker out in the lot, not seeing any need to expose Noelle to that yet, though the time would come she'd have to learn it was part of their lives now, essential to their survival.

"What'd you find?" she asked.

"A bunch of stuff. Including a solar generator," she smiled. "So…that portable DVD-player we found…and all those movies you wanted, Noelle, we can go get 'em."

"Really?"

"Yup. But, there's rules about watchin' the movies, alright. I'll only allow it before bedtime, inside Dale's RV, otherwise the noise'll bring walkers to the party," Collis said, stashing the generator in the bed of the truck with the other bits and pieces she had found. "Does that sound okay to you?"

"Yup," Noelle grinned, and she dashed off, cards flying, back to the double-doors into the dormitory. Freya collected the cards and boxed them, before they followed Noelle inside. They'd found a portable Blu-Ray DVD-player in one of the dorms, a headphone-separator plug, and quite a few 100-slot cases for DVDs and CDs, even a pocket-projector. They had an entire box full of head- and earphones, cords and USB cables for iPods and iPads, because Amy had her _iPad_, even Collis had a tiny touch-screen _Nano_, Freya had an _iPod_ Touch. Music was one of the things Collis did miss.

"We should get goin', we're losin' the light," Collis said, eyeing Noelle sucking her thumb, hugging that sloth plush. "Noelle, have you been to the bathroom."

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"…No."

"Alright, we'll all go to the bathroom," Collis said quietly. Ten minutes later, they were shifting uncomfortably in the sweltering cab of the Silverado, even though Collis had left the windows rolled right down. Freya glanced down at the pink floral booster-seat Collis had found, in which Noelle was now buckled.

"Did you get that from one of the cars?" she asked, glancing at Collis, who nodded.

"Your friend's?"

"Yeah." Collis nodded, put the truck in gear, and pulled out of the courtyard.

"Okay, so if you just take a left – _oh_." Collis ignored the roads. They needed to get out of the city with as little trouble as possible, back to camp before dark, and Collis knew which roads were accessible, and which were blocked off by walkers. The truck was raised, but they had the windows open, and if they were set on by a big group, Noelle could be snatched out no trouble. They could get scratched, bitten easily. So she drove across the lawn, toward the park. Conscious of the trailer, it was still quieter than Freya's _pacifier_, where the largest swarm of walkers she'd seen was still being riled trying to get to the protected carousel.

"Hey, this has a CD-player," Freya remarked; someone had upgraded the shitty old truck from a cassette-player to a small, inexpensive CD-player with AUX-input.

"When we get outta the city we can put some music on," Collis said. "Keep it low-key 'til we're out on the freeway."

"You got it," Freya nodded.

"Are we going on an adventure now?" Noelle asked, and Collis smiled.

"You bet."

"Oh, _boy_!" Noelle grinned. She had on a pair of child's glittery turquoise sunglasses, still had her thumb in her mouth, clutching the sloth plush and her little fingers clamped around the strap of her Merida backpack. Beside Collis, Freya had tucked a faded navy baseball cap on and purplish-blue mirrored sunglasses; she had the first signs of sunburn on her shoulders and a trickle of sweat glittered down the side of her face. They were all quiet, even Noelle didn't need to be told not to hum while Collis navigated the streets.

"Take the wheel a sec," she said quietly, and Freya glanced at her. She didn't ask why, just did it; Collis kept her foot on the gas, crawling down the street, but there were more walkers than she liked, and the truck was loud. Freya had wrinkled her nose and said it needed a tune-up when Collis had reversed it into the courtyard earlier. Freya steered while Collis attached a silencer to one of the pistols Freya had been hoarding, leaned out the window and across the hood of the truck, took aim, and shattered several windows on the upper-levels of an office-building down one of the side-streets off the wide boulevard that fed onto the freeway, and several of the cars parked beneath it. Car-alarms started screaming, and every walker she could see was turning toward the noise – turning away from the truck. They all started swarming toward the source of the noise, clearing the street for her.

"Okay, that was cool," Freya remarked, still leaning over the wheel as Collis manoeuvred back into the cab. "How many times have you done this?"

"'Bout a dozen or so," Collis shrugged.

"Are you an adrenaline junkie or something?"

Collis laughed grimly. "No. And I'm not particularly daredevil, neither. Just, people need things, I can get 'em. And give me walkers over IEDs any day." She sighed heavily, manoeuvring to the freeway.

"Er…this is the _exit_," Freya said, glancing at her. Collis glanced back, her expression unchanged, and Freya smirked slightly. "Okay." She drove the truck and utility-trailer up the slip-road that had once functioned as the freeway exit, joining the empty road. The other side of the freeway was stuffed full of abandoned cars – and in early days Collis and Glenn had scavenged through quite a few of the ones nearest the camp, before they'd been brave – and desperate – enough to head into the city. She could pick up speed on the freeway, and did. No traffic, nothing; it was louder with the windows down but she and Freya both sat up straighter, plucking their t-shirts away from their skin to get some cool air circulating under the cotton. They shared out a fruit-water Collis had scavenged earlier, Freya helping Noelle with the bottle. The sun was setting to their left as they drove, the sky an extraordinary wash of oranges and fuchsias, gilded and vibrant. It was still spring, the hottest Georgia had had in a long while according to weather reports before everything went dark. She kept her sunglasses on 'til the last minute, until the sky was more purple than red and no sign of the sun was left. Night had fallen, and Noelle was dozing in her booster-seat.

Freya glanced at her. She'd taken off her shades and had her leg pulled up, hugging her knee. She looked tired, but she gave Collis a small smile as she said, plainly, "Thanks."

Collis glanced at her, then back at the road. "Don't have to thank me." She hadn't done anything, not really. Cleaned out her stash, got her out of the city, but Freya's situation hadn't changed. They were all in too much danger, it didn't bear thinking about.

Today hadn't gone the way she'd planned. Well, nothing ever had. Her entire life, she'd never particularly had a _plan_. She made it seem like she was on top of things, Nicki had always admired how collected she was, said she made everyone around her feel at ease, safe, because she didn't panic. She got things done, and only let people realise how precarious the situation had been after the problems had been solved. She'd always been that way. She'd never wanted Ephraim or Bea to know how bad things were.

"What's that?" Freya asked sharply, and Collis finally removed her sunglasses, propping them on top of her cap, to squint in the headlights and roll her eyes when she recognised the baseball-cap, the toolkit, the _Norton_ crossbow.

She sighed, shaking her head, and flashed her lights. Smirking, she wolf-whistled as she drove past, slowing down, and leaned out the window. "Y'all are too pretty to be out here all by yourselves. Wanna ride?"

* * *

**A.N.**: But, seriously, why didn't they steal a car from the city to get back to camp?


	6. Ambush

**A.N.**: An update! I know, it's been too long – full-time work isn't working for me. I need to win the Euro Millions and dedicate my life to writing. And watching _Game of Thrones_. Speaking of, I may soon be uploading the first chapter of a _Game of Thrones_ fanfic.

* * *

**Our Deepest Fear**

_05_

_Ambush_

* * *

"Oh my…"

"Is that –?"

"_Gunfire_." Collis stepped on the gas, flooding the area with light with the high-beams, she heard Glenn yell as the truck lurched but they clung on until they reached camp.

"Oh my god," Freya breathed, squirming in her seat, as the boys hopped out of the truck and started firing off shots. Screams rent the air, gunshots echoing, people were yelling, walker moans drowned out the cicadas for the first time since they had set up camp. Brief flashes of light from each shot illuminated Daryl's position, Glenn's, the high-beams of the Silverado lit up the camp with unnatural white light, bodies on the floor, so many walkers feasting.

"Roll up the window," Collis said quietly, and Freya leaned past Noelle to wind up the window as quickly as she could without answering back.

"Collis –" She stared past Noelle, still winding up the window.

"Got it," Collis said quietly, winding up her own before unsheathing her knife and slipping out of the truck, using the door as a shield to rebut a walker. She stabbed one right in the eye, dropping it so the one behind stumbled, she got it too, and ran around the front of the truck to take down two more. The gunfire, the screams, it didn't faze her, Collis blocked out everything but the simple facts, the walkers' positions, how many there were, who was still left to fight them off. Morales had a baseball-bat, Jim an axe, Shane had the kids, Carol, Mrs Morales and Lori huddled up against the RV. Dale was firing off shots from his hunting-rifle. She threw three of her throwing-knives across the camp and her tactical tomahawk, always strapped to her thigh, was embedded deep in the skull of a walker bearing down on Shane and the others, his shotgun clicking when he pulled the trigger, no more shells left, felt the warm splash of blood across her face and wiped her mouth on her shoulder before palming her machete, wrenching the tomahawk from the skull of the dead walker, turning to fell three more walkers, quick and forceful hits to the head, falling on top of each other.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Bodies everywhere, the dry earth was glistening with blood splashed everywhere, body-parts from dismembered campmates dropped here and there, she stepped over them, aimed her throwing-knives, launched two, changed her grip and stabbed a walker in the face, hard, when it came up behind her growling. The immediate area was cleared, she turned her back on the fire and the RV and the Silverado lit up everything like Times Square on New Year's. There were a few soft whimpers, and Glenn was agitated and deeply upset, Rick was screaming for his family, and a few last straggling walkers were put down by a pissed-off Daryl, smashing heads in with the butt of his rifle. Collis scanned the treeline, felling three more walkers with her last throwing-knives, and the very last walker still moving received a tomahawk to the back of the skull.

After the screams and gunshots the sudden silence was terrifying. Her blood was racing, she hadn't realised she was panting, and her legs were shaking. This wasn't supposed to happen.

In the aftermath, everyone froze, panting, horrified. In _shock_. There were bodies on the blood-splattered ground, friends and decaying strangers. People they knew; people they had never, would never know. Monsters right out of horror-movies. Collis didn't understand – she glanced at Shane, who was scowling over at Rick, panting. No-one said anything, how could they? What could they say, now? But what Collis wanted to know –

"What the hell happened?" Daryl demanded, using the hem of his vest to wipe his face of blood and sweat. He wasn't afraid of asking the question nobody wanted to. To start that argument, and Collis had felt it brewing. Rick was clinging to Lori and Carl but the second he let go, she knew Shane would start on him.

"You tell me, man," Shane said gruffly. "In and out, y'all said. Get Merle, get the guns, get back. Where were y'all? I tell you some', this woulda never happened if you'd been here."

"Careful," Collis spoke up icily, levelling a glare at Shane. "How did this many walkers get the drop on you? Who was on watch?" Shane glared back at her, silent but agitated, doing that fidgeting thing he did when he was being second-guessed by someone who saw differently.

"It…" Dale stammered, then gasped and shook his head, looking stricken. "There was no-one."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We were having a fish-fry," Andrea spoke up from the steps of the RV. She looked grim and nauseated, behind her a pale face was awash with tears, Amy was hugging little Mariana and Jorge. Collis stared at Andrea, blinking furiously, trying to process this.

"You… You knew you were undermanned so you had a _cookout_?" she said sharply to Shane.

"We'd've had y'all here it wouldn't've mattered."

"Don't turn this on us. Walkers attacked, and you had completely ignored my suggestions this morning. Double-watch, sweep the woods," Collis said icily. She was _angry_. There were bodies everywhere.

"You took four of our men to –"

"We had five, you had as many guys as was just butchered," Daryl said casually, stooping as he passed several; he wiped the blood and brain-matter off Collis' throwing-knives before handing them to her. "You had more'n enough menfolk to protect the entire camp. _Did_. This ain't on us."

"It's not entirely on them, either," Collis sighed. "It happened. Does nobody any good to try and place blame. C'mon, we've got work to do."

"That's it?" Lori gasped; tears were pouring down her cheeks. "No apology –"

"We've got _nothing_ to apologise for," Collis said sharply, levelling Lori with a challenging look, her shoulders thrown back. She gestured around. "Fact is, y'all should've taken extra precaution knowin' you were vulnerable. That's all I'll say on the matter." She shot Shane a particularly nasty look. All these pointless deaths.

"What…what _happened_?" Lori gasped, turning now to her husband. "You said you'd be back–"

"We ran into some trouble," Rick said calmly, but tension was written in every line of his face. "I…I don't know what Collis got up to, but it seems like she brought more than enough supplies…to keep us all goin' for a while." He sighed heavily, staring with bleak, shell-shocked eyes at the desolated camp.

"Who…the _hell_'re they?" Daryl asked, gesturing back toward the Silverado. The lights were blinding, but two dark shadows wavered in front of them, one tall, a hand reaching to the little one. Noelle was still sucking her thumb, peering owlishly at the corpses around her. The ground glistened with shed blood and body-parts, and Freya's mouth hung open in horror as she stared around her.

"They're stayin' with us," Collis said quietly, staring around her dispassionately. So many bodies. They would have to work overnight to clean up camp. It would take hours to burn the bodies alone.

"Just another couple mouths to feed," Shane grunted.

"Good thing you let a dozen others get killed," Freya snapped, and Collis glanced over at the girl, her lips starting to twitch at the sight of her glowering at Shane. "I heard you. Didn't even have a _watch_?" She turned her frown from Shane toward Collis, and it shifted into something gentler, inquiring. "Where d'you want us? I'll get Noelle tucked in."

"In the RV," Collis said, indicating the RV with one of her throwing-knives. She saw Freya's gaze linger on them for a moment, before she nodded. "You're up to it, we could use the help cleaning up." She didn't miss Daryl's curious frown at tiny Noelle, then her, as Freya led her to the RV.

"Never been in a _RV_ before!" Noelle chirped, surprising Collis as she completely disregarded the walker by the steps with its head half cut off.

"Well, this is a very special RV," Dale said, looking shell-shocked but giving Noelle a warm smile. "Only the very_ best_ people get to sleep in here."

"Really?"

"Yep. See, this is Amy. And that's Jorge and Mariana. This is Carl, and over there hiding is Miss Sophia," Dale said softly, offering Noelle a hand to help her clamber up the steps into the RV. Collis could hear the muted whimpers and unabashed cries from the other children. "And what is your name?"

"I'm Noelle. I was born on Christmas."

"That's very pretty," Dale smiled warmly, as Noelle disappeared from view. Collis glanced around as Freya disappeared into the RV.

"Daryl, you got that pick?"

"Yeah."

"Glenn, start gatherin' firewood, build that fire high; it'll take hours for them bodies to burn," Collis said, cleaning off her blades, as Daryl went to retrieve a pick-axe from the bed of his truck. She glanced around, taking stock of who was still standing, who was able. Carol was inside the RV with the children and Freya, but the others were shaken but on their feet. "First thing, check the tents, dismantle the ones we don't need. We'll all bunk together now."

"Close quarters," Shane grunted.

"Fewer places to defend. Leaves the tree-line visible," Collis said, and Daryl gave her a measuring look and nodded.

"Gotta put the pick through their skulls first 'fore we burn 'em, though," he grunted softly, his chest still heaving from exertion. And it didn't stop. They stayed on their feet, cleaning up camp until the sun had risen, too hot, too sticky, too early. The cicadas started their chorus and the birds were singing as they pierced skulls with a pick-axe, walker and friend alike. The casualties had been accounted for, over two-thirds their group. Astonishingly, no children had been killed; Carol and Mrs Morales had got them all into the RV and barricaded the door with Amy while Lori had clung to Shane. They discovered how the attack had occurred while they cleaned up the mess; and Ed Peletier seemed to have been among one of the first victims, his corpse all but picked clean, until it resembled…well, a carcass. Not a human-body anymore. When a person got lost in the woods, sometimes their remains got to looking like that. The gunshots and screams had drawn most of the walkers away from the prey they had already taken down in the tents bordering the woods, and the closer to the campfire the less the bodies were mutilated, but they still had to sink a pick into their skulls, or at least a knife. Through the eye-socket or up under the jaw was easiest, and a lot less messy; Collis was cleaning brain-matter and blood off one particular knife all night.

For once Shane kept his mouth shut and did what was asked when she took direction of the survivors. Rick observed her as they worked, believing Collis to be the kind of woman indispensable in crises. She had the grit and strong stomach to do anything necessary. The fires had to be built, no matter how hot it was; the tents they weren't using were dismantled and set aside; and she put Freya and Amy to the task of keeping the kids busy inside the RV while they worked. There was little they could do now to shield the little ones from the new reality of their lives, but rubbing their faces in it wasn't going to help. There was no readily-available water source to wash away the blood but in the back of her mind Collis knew they wouldn't be staying here beside the quarry for long. Too many walkers had attacked, they were coming out of the cities looking for food.

"What're you doin'?" she asked coolly, pausing as she watched Shane reach into the bed of the _Silverado_ with an expression of relief washing over his face. The crate of _Gatorades_ and other supplies glinted under the cover of plastic wrappings. Eyeing the truck, she needed to cover it with a tarpaulin or something so the food wouldn't spoil from exposure.

"Thirsty."

"There's water in the barrels."

"Probably contaminated."

"That's not for consumption."

"It's here."

"We won't make it through winter without supplies," Collis said, trying to fill her lungs against the humidity pressing on every part of her body, the sweat dripping from her. "This ain't a free-for-all."

"It's here, we need it."

"We got the quarry, for now. We got squirrels. That there is for treatin' dehydration, heart-o'-winter supplies when the animals hibernate," Collis said smoothly. "Can't just go helpin' yourself as you feel like it. There's others who'll need it more." The bite in her tone was enough to make Shane scoff but step off, and no further attempt to take from the supplies she and Freya had brought was made.

Living in the situation they were, working together was paramount not only to their survival but to making camp _endurable_. Shane had done his utmost to set down the law as he wanted them to follow, and to keep the peace Collis had gone along for the ride, about most things. Now things had changed so drastically, Shane's way was not going to work: Collis didn't know Rick well but admired his drive to do some _good_. The right thing was always the hardest to accomplish; as a teenager, she'd thought the hardest thing she could do was leave her brother and sister to join the Marines, to send money back. A recruitment officer had advised her that the hardest thing she could do was stay and look after them.

Squinting behind her sunglasses, which kept slipping down her nose as sweat poured from her, she glanced over at the door to the RV, where the kids' soft giggles could be heard; Freya was in there, with a deck of cards and a handful of spoons, playing a game. To even hear their laughter, after last night was a miraculous thing, and oddly soothing.

Even in the world's darkest moments, children could still _laugh_.

One bucket had been set up to wash off their hands; a little cup sat beside the second to help themselves to water, either douse their heads with it or chug it down. The lukewarm water did nothing to stifle the exhaustion, barely made a dent against the sweat soaked through her clothes, and her heart was hammering with exertion as she paused from moving several more bodies. The heat pressing on them did nothing to help as they dismantled the camp, the cicadas were the only source of noise, and the occasional crunch of Daryl's pick-axe.

Panting, her heart hammering in her chest, Collis dipped her hands in the bucket, trying to wipe off as much muck as she could, and glanced up as gravel crunched softly beneath someone's seat. "That the last of 'em?" Daryl asked, and Collis nodded.

"Yeah. Best start burning the walkers."

"Chinaman's pitching a fit about buryin' the other ones," Daryl murmured.

"He's right," Collis said softly, intent on cleaning under her fingernails with the blunt edge of her smallest knife, the blood and gore rinsed off into the bucket. "They were our friends."

"Them other ones were somebody's friends," Daryl said quietly, and Collis glanced up at him for a second, then nodded.

"Can't bury 'em all."

"Shouldn't bury any of 'em."

"You've seen to 'em, shouldn't be a problem," Collis said softly. She glanced around, her stomach all but turning inside out. She hadn't eaten anything since that mac-n-cheese at Noelle's mother's apartment yesterday. "You still got those squirrels?"

"Mm-hmm." Collis nodded, tended the fire segregated as the one for cooking and boiling the water, and went to the RV, poking her head inside. A little cocoa face glanced up at her, smiling warmly.

"You know how to swim?"

Under the pretence of swimming in the lake she'd gotten the kids all bathed – such things as modesty and embarrassment about nudity in front of other people was becoming a thing of the past: they were too close, had to depend on each other. Only Daryl kept to himself when he bathed, _if_ he bathed. He reasoned it that animals could smell soap better than they could plain old unwashed human scent. Collis had watched him for weeks, wondering that actually, perhaps he didn't like people to see him undressed, any more than she liked immersing herself in large bodies of water out in the open like this.

And better to get the kids used to this kind of lifestyle than let them go on in the belief they'd have hot baths and fluffy towels – as a kid, swimming in the lake had been the purest joy she had known; in the summer she'd bathe in the lake morning and evening after playing in the woods all day with Amelia. But walkers weren't the only danger they might ever face – little kids had to grow up knowing how to swim. Mariana and Jorge were like little fish, Sophia more reluctant to strip off, but encouraged by Collis' lack of shame in baring down to her freckled – and scarred – skin.

The hard part was getting the little merfolk back onto shore, wrapped up in towels and wearing pants. There were no walkers in the water – for all Freya mused that would make a great M Night Shyamalan movie – and down here, away from the blood-saturated earth and the ripped tents, there was a temporary reprieve, for a moment Collis could step away from the gruesome night before and just enjoy the simple pleasure of watching children giggle and splash in the water, the cicadas creating their daily chorus, birds twittering. Only the coarse voices of the exhausted adults brought them back to themselves, wandering back up to the now-diminished camp.

"A'ight, you kids, who wants to learn to make squirrel stew?" she asked on a sigh, and Noelle turned owl-eyes on her, her face framed with tightly-wound curls drenched in water.

"_Squirrels_? Ew!"

"Not _ew_! _Mmm_," Collis said, rubbing her stomach, and Noelle crinkled her nose. But she perched closest to Collis as she set about dressing the dozen squirrels Daryl had caught out in the woods. And she giggled as Collis bickered with Daryl about the best way to stew them. Collis had become aware that, strictly platonically, she and Daryl Dixon behaved like an old married couple. Very quickly, they had learned each other's ways and habits, had fallen into a quiet partnership, complementing each other. There wasn't anyone in camp Collis _liked_ more than Daryl; she knew the others barely tolerated him. But they'd all grown up differently to the way Daryl, and Collis, had, and there was no explaining that difference because they couldn't appreciate it.

"—my way's _quicker_."

"Still wrong."

"Is not –"

"You're both _very _good at skinning squirrels," Freya interjected exasperatedly, her eyes wide with amusement as she watched the two.

"I'm better," Collis muttered, and Daryl punted the back of her knee playfully before striding off muttering something about taking a piss and hoping not to get his dick bit off in the woods.

"We never went to high-school t'gether did we?" Collis asked teasingly, and Daryl stuck his tongue between his teeth as he grinned, shuffling backwards. Collis' lips twitched as she turned back to the cast-iron kettle, watching Sophia dutifully chop up carrots into equal rounds, Noelle's tiny tongue poking between her teeth in concentration as she tried to peel some potatoes. Collis had brought a peeler from Noelle's kitchen, remembering Carol sighing that she'd forgotten to pack hers. Usually Carol appeared when there was food being prepared but today, nobody was going to ask too much of her – Ed was gone. The state of his marriage with Carol was their business but everyone knew it, and now Carol had to figure out who she was outside of him, and just how strong she had been.

There was no set plan, no road-map. Nobody had any answers and yet there were natural leaders, people who had assumed roles of responsibility within the group. Glenn was their runner, he knew how to get in and out of places real quick and quiet; if they needed help with food or mending things that was Carol's area of expertise. Dale had every tool they could need, and he always spoke words of wisdom and kindness, sadly something in dire shortness of supply when the temperature started rising and the food-stores ran low, the frustration and feeling of helplessness weighing on most of the men, the girls bitching each other out. Collis kept to herself, to her books. Loner that he was, Daryl usually went hunting; if he couldn't, he'd come into her tent – if Merle was out of it. If not, the Dixons kept to themselves, and she didn't go out of her way to seek out the only likeminded person in camp. She and Daryl had similar backgrounds, not identical but it was easy for one who was raised like her to spot another.

No qualms about taking what they needed, she was politer but Daryl was more brazen and less likely to take anyone's bullshit. She was good with the kids and he wasn't afraid to get in Shane's face – and he didn't back down. Collis was good at putting the other girls in their place but she'd never been one to make friends easy and it felt very much like the other times she'd shipped out. All that time in the desert, here she was, more bodies being dropped almost daily. Except the time-bombs weren't buried beneath the rubble, they were real and moving and relentless.

She stirred the stew, wishing there were some mushrooms, and squinted at Daryl as he strode back, crossbow over his shoulder. "Wash your hands," she said quietly. He gave her a look but did as she asked; he'd wash his face if she asked. He'd come back to camp before now with blood smeared around his mouth from eating the raw insides of squirrels, necessity dictating, and she'd been on watch – she'd had him wash his face before he returned to camp every time, just so Dale didn't shoot him on the spot thinking he'd turned. He dunked his hands into a bucket of water, flicking his fingers at her, making her crinkle her nose.

"That sunburn's peelin' good," he smirked, and she growled softly under her breath.

"I know," she said softly.

"Pretty soon you're gon' be one big freckle," he said happily.

"Try the stew," Collis said softly, holding out the ladle. "Think it needs more pepper?"

"Just a little," he shrugged. "Shame we ain't got no mushrooms." The one thing they agreed one was a good stew needed mushrooms; and nobody knew fungi like Collis. Her thoughts trailed off to the bushel of curious wild mushrooms she had given her boyfriend's bona fide Italian _mamma_ to make into whatever she liked, and the feast that had followed, and she felt heaviness weigh on her shoulders, grinding some more pepper into the pot, as Daryl hugged his crossbow and watched Noelle playing hopscotch in the dust with Sophia and Mariana.

"What's her story?" he asked quietly, chewing on the inside of his lip in that habit he had.

"I climbed a fire-escape to get a good view, saw this tiny little face grinnin' at me. Scared the shit outta me," Collis admitted, and Daryl's lips twitched. "Found mama in the bedroom…she'd shot big-sis…both of 'em were bit."

"Kept her safe?"

"Yeah. Left her with tonnes of food, runnin' water. She's a pretty good girl, I think. Still washes every day, brushes her teeth," she said, casting Daryl a sly look. "Never used the stove, and she put all her trash in a bag."

"They raised her good," Daryl said quietly. "What're we gon' do with her? With them?" He squinted at her in the sun, a fine sheen of sweat plastering his hair to his head. She eyed the children, skipping about or playing cards in the shade. She sighed softly.

"At some point we're gon' have to take 'em out, train 'em to hunt," she said softly.

"Hunt or be hunted."

"Mm. And the strongest die quick." The bravest, the strongest men she had ever served with had either been killed in action or been shipped back stateside with missing limbs, their old personalities ripped from them as sure as shrapnel was plucked out of wounds. A few clever ones lasted longer, till they didn't. It was the mean ones, the ones whose hearts weren't in it, who kept going, she had found. When she'd latched onto this group it hadn't been because she was close with anyone, as much as she'd seen of some of them she hadn't liked them, she had just figured this group was as good or as bad as any other. At least with kids around there was bound to be some measure of civility. When it was just men alone things got twisted and scary. She'd grown up with tough sons of whores who could eat hammers and shit out hand-grenades, and this new world they'd been left to was sure to fashion a few more men like them. Cruel ones.

She didn't think any of them were cruel but as she tasted the stew with the added pepper, she watched Shane from the secrecy of her visor and her sunglasses, saw him doing that shifting thing he did, impatient and restless, casting glances at the Silverado, cussing to himself.

They were gonna fall out one day, Collis knew. She'd taken his bullshit so long but now she was just pissed off at the senseless deaths, the stupidity of their _leader_. Shane was lucky the walkers hadn't picked him off as the weakest in the herd. Nasty and arrogant and stupid did not work well together. Shane was showing himself to be a man who did not play well with others.

Small wonder he'd had to chase after his best-friend's grieving wife. Couldn't get any tail to stick around, but oh, that little boy loved him. And Lori would always do what was best for her boy, she said.

"You gon' keep watchin' him like a hawk?" Daryl asked.

"I don't like him," Collis said softly.

"Thought everyone liked the golden-boy."

"He ain't no hero. Look at him. I've seen frustration and loss buildin' up like that before. One day he's gon' explode and try to take what he feels is _his_…I just hope there ain't a load of walkers nearby when that pin gets pulled."

"Could just put him down now, save the hassle. Jim dug all them graves."

"Yeah," Collis said softly. They'd been told Jim had suffered heatstroke and frightened a lot of the camp – he'd been digging huge holes with no idea why, and they'd done a poor job of teasing out why he was doing it, instead they'd ambushed him, made him out to be the bad guy and tied him up in the shade 'til he could be cooled down. It was a miracle he hadn't been caught out by the walkers, tied to a tree. Easy pickings.

"You gon' watch 'em fill the holes?" Daryl asked, and Collis shook her head.

"Naw," she said softly. "Never go to funerals."

"Sheriff's wife's sayin' as how we all need time to process and make peace and all that hippie bullshit."

"Death happens. Every day. Walkers or no, that hasn't changed. Won't ever."

"Guessin' you're used to warzones."

"Yeah."

"You gon' give me some of that stew 'fore I pay my respects to the wife-beater?"

"Just don't piss on his grave where Carol or Sophia can see you."

* * *

**A.N.**: A shock, I know, I updated. This full-time work, grown-up thing is just not working for me.


	7. The Road Ahead

**A.N.**: In this universe, if there are 309,349,689 people in the US and the ratio of humans = walkers is 1 = 5,000, that means (pardon my overly simplistic maths) there are about 61,870 humans to 309,287,819 walkers. What's the phrase – _May the odds be ever in your favour_!

I thought I wasn't ready to emotionally commit to our favourite survivors again – turns out, I am! After a big break from _TWD_ I am currently in the middle of season five – I'm trying to figure out how I can rejig canon and write my own stuff to make the story my own, unexpected etc.

I love that Rick and Daryl have become brothers, it feels healthier and more genuine than Rick's friendship with Shane, which has deep issues even before Shane killed Otis; if they're brothers, Carol's kind of their slightly crazy aunt; Maggie and Glenn are the younger siblings; Michonne's the awesome stepmother; I want to be able to show that Rick and Collis' relationship becomes a strong brother-sister bond on a par with his bond with Daryl, it's not romantic but deeply respectful.

I'm trying to figure out just how gruesome Negan's death will be.

Final note: I was inspired to go back to this story again by the song 'Warrior Daughter' by _Wildwood_ _Kin_, who I had the pleasure of seeing live in Oxford last weekend. Brilliant, check out their EP.

* * *

**Our Deepest Fear**

_06_

_The Road Ahead_

* * *

She finally sat down well after dusk. The camp had been dismantled as much as it could be, the supplies belonging to the dead organised, anything unnecessary – and there was a lot of that kind of stuff; it was amazing what people packed for an apocalypse – left in one of the cars they knew from its previous owner was unreliable. She was dizzy with exhaustion, her head thumping as if someone was taking a jackhammer to the inside of her skull, but she kept going, just like they all did. They had lost over two-thirds their number. Too many; but they had gained Freya, and Noelle.

Whether the others thought she had brought back a greater burden, a small child and a stranger, they didn't say anything; they were too busy. Even Shane was too tired to antagonise.

Freya and Noelle were her responsibility. She had brought them in, to witness the worst tragedy they had suffered so far. Whatever safety Freya had thought she'd have with the tough G.I. Jane they'd watch saunter around the city without turning a hair at the walkers, she didn't show any signs of regretting her decision; as for Noelle, she was sweet, ceaselessly cheerful and obliging. She asked Collis if she could help, and tirelessly trudged back and forth to the quarry bringing a little bucket of water back each time, usually pouring it over Collis' or Daryl's heads to keep them cool. She giggled when she upturned the bucket each time, and Collis ignored the looks Lori gave her, like she couldn't believe Collis let a child down to the quarry by herself, or let her around the walkers Daryl was seeing to with his pick-axe. But she was more curious than squeamish, and Collis saw the necessity in getting Noelle used to their new reality as quickly as possible – if she had any shot of survival.

However Noelle and Freya were both processing the massacre, it wasn't the best introduction to the revered leadership of Sheriff Shane. It was still raw in her chest, the rage she felt toward Shane – a _fish fry_. Knowing they were undermanned and in greater danger, they had decided to pull the watchman from his post. The slaughter had triggered memories she had had to slam her steel-reinforced mental door against, or she'd be lost. How many times… How many times had she picked up her friends, blown into parts? She slammed that door shut, flinching as she gripped her throbbing head. It did nobody any good to have to take care of her if she let it all wash over her; the last thing they needed was a Marine going through an episode of PTSD. She had dealt with this and worse. She had brought those two girls in and for them she had to hold it together; she wouldn't ask anyone else to take responsibility for her actions. Narcissist that he was, Shane was blaming everyone but himself. Dale was sombre and regretful, blaming himself as he trudged around camp with his hunting-rifle over his shoulder, and the others were in varying degrees of shock.

Once the last body had been laid low, they had regrouped for supper, and she thought her spring squirrel stew was a welcome change to Daryl's 'recipe'. They had plied Freya with her first hot meal in weeks, telling her story. The campus, the 'cops' who took by force what they wanted – guns, food, _people_ – and her pacifier. Those who had been angry at the boys for leaving camp – Andrea, Lori – had been forced to simmer down at the revelation that Rick had given some of his guns to a group of street-thugs who alone had stayed in Atlanta protecting the abandoned residents of a care-home, led by the custodian after every other staff-member had fled. They had fortified the home, allowing the elderly residents there the dignity of a gentle end free from terror.

It was incredibly _humbling_; Collis wished she might have seen it.

Especially the nasty man-eating sons of bitch dogs that had been set loose on Glenn! That made her lips twitch, imagining the reactions of Rick, Daryl and T-Dog when they finally found Glenn in the hall surrounded by the elderly, led through a street-gang armed to the teeth by a half-cracked Hispanic woman who'd thought Rick had come to arrest her grandson. _Sweet_.

Collis had sat listening to everything, watching Sophia read a _Harry Potter_ book quietly to the other kids, thinking on how one of the characters had once said 'The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters', but… This new, harsh world was going to be carved out by those who would do anything to survive. Ruthless, unconscientious, brutal. Selfish. In the equation for survival, there was no room for sentiment. And yet kindness, humour, compassion, selflessness, were what separated them from animals.

With Noelle fast asleep, snoring lightly as she cuddled up with Freya on the sleeping-bag they had unzipped, too hot to sleep under covers, she sat on her little cot with her head throbbing in her hands, needing desperately to sleep. None of them had for days, and she was used to it, but… The _heat_. The humidity so heavy she could feel it sitting on her lungs, the exertion the last day and before that in Atlanta… It had caught up to her. She just wanted to sleep – and go to sleep not worrying she had to do so with one eye open, ears straining for the tiniest sound in case the watchman fell into a doze while they sat up on Dale's RV with the hunting-rifle. There were fewer of them, now – that meant provisions didn't have to stretch as far but it also meant the rotation for the watch would be strained.

"Uh… Collis?" a familiar voice said hesitantly, and she recognised it instantly as Dale. She gave an answering groan as she leaned to unzip the tent-flap, wobbling and finally sinking off the cot onto the ground. On her knees, head pounding, she unzipped the tent, Dale's anxious face peering down at her. He probably didn't recognise her without her cap and sunglasses on – she was a natural redhead and before she left the tent each morning she donned both, relying on covering up rather than wasting sunscreen Lori and Carol tried to keep the kids slathered in.

"What d'you need, Dale?" she asked quietly, wincing as she raised a hand to her head.

"I – are you alright?" Dale asked quietly, concern in his voice. She smiled, and it was pained.

"Just a headache," she said softly. "It'll pass. What d'you need?"

"It can wait, you get some rest," Dale said, frowning concernedly at her. "You've had a rough few days."

"I'll be up for the early watch," she promised, and Dale nodded, giving her a sympathetic smile, and trudged off. She squashed a wave of nausea as her head throbbed, and dropped back onto her cot.

* * *

The cool air woke her, whispering through the open flap of her tent, like a caress, chilling the sweat hot and cloying on her skin. She pulled on her denims, checked her guns, strapped all her knives, her tomahawk and hatchet on and laced up her boots with double knots. Noelle snuffled in her sleep, starfished across the unzipped sleeping-bag; Freya was curled up on her side at the edge, her bare feet covered with her sweatshirt, a knife held loosely in her palm. Collis quirked an eyebrow at it but didn't take the knife from her; they all slept lightly nowadays.

It was still dark when she poked her head out of the tent, and a fine mist of dew glistened in the moonlight on the tents; it would disappear by dawn, it always did. By the heavy, silvered light, the embers of the fire, and the deep male snores, she knew it was still a couple hours 'til dawn. It was strange, standing in the moonlit camp, shrunken in size, the funeral pyre of walkers still simmering with golden glowing ash off to the side. The feel of the place had changed; even the cicadas seemed more solemn.

"Mornin'," a quiet voice rumbled as she stretched, working out the kinks, enjoying the deep breath of the pre-dawn, the gentle, cool calm before the breaking of day and the blistering sun rose, and she glanced to the side; Daryl sat in the bed of his truck where he slept under a rigged tarp, knee cocked, crossbow trained on the treeline.

"You had watch?"

"Naw. Couldn't sleep," he said softly. "T-Dog's up on the perch." Collis nodded. "You doin' your chores?" She smiled softly.

"Yeah."

"You and them plants – you could at least be growin' mushrooms," he grinned lazily. They often had arguments about the best mushrooms for fall stews. Collis chuckled softly. "Or weed."

"With the good Sheriff in town?" she smiled, and Daryl climbed off the truck-bed, slinging his crossbow over his back.

"Might make Shane chill some," he shrugged, eyeing Shane's single-man tent. He had moved it across the camp from Lori and Carl's family-size one, now occupied by her husband too.

"Doubt much would," she said thoughtfully. She handed Daryl one of the buckets. "Here. Let's take a walk. I miss anything last night?"

"Just the others arguin'. What comes next," Daryl said, striding along beside her down to the quarry. "Shane's all for Fort Benning. Rick wants to head to the CDC. Find answers. If there are any."

"What do you wanna do?"

"Makes no difference to me," Daryl shrugged.

"Is that why Dale came to my tent last night?"

"Guess so. Came to me, made a case for the CDC."

"He's backin' Rick?" She wasn't really surprised; Dale and Shane got along about as well and she and Shane did.

"Guess he sees Rick's got his head on right," Daryl murmured. "Push comes to shove – I saw who Rick is, back in Atlanta. It's been you, me and the Chinaman keeping these people goin', huntin', scavenging the city. Shane wouldn't piss on you if you was dyin' of thirst."

"Especially not if Lori or Carl needed a drink," Collis agreed grimly. Daryl grunted softly, and they dunked the buckets into the quarry, the water mirror-still but for the gentle breeze. This time of the day was her favourite; it was so quiet, if she closed her eyes she could imagine being home, on her mountain, on a hunt with Daddy, or shooting the shit with Teardrop on the porch on a crisp winter's night with a cup of shitty instant coffee, sharing a cigarette. She glanced at Daryl as he stooped to fill his bucket. "Hey… I'm sorry about Merle – I mean, I'm sorry he left you." Merle had escaped the department store, had stolen the guys' truck; but he hadn't so far made an entrance at the camp. Daryl had been expecting him to; he knew Merle Dixon would do whatever he had to, to survive. But he hadn't come back to his brother, the one person in the world who would do anything for him. Their relationship was complicated, and Collis recognised it. Merle made her think of Teardrop, and Daddy, and Thump, and she had hated that. She was glad he hadn't come back to camp. Daryl glanced at her, his hooded eyes concealing his emotions, but he chewed his lip and nodded, and she saw it in the moonlight.

"He's tough," Daryl murmured. "He'll survive."

"Yeah. Guys like him always do," Collis said softly; and she knew, because she was from a family of them. "You know, I grew up in the Ozarks – real old mountain folk. The mountain was the law, y'know? Tough bastards who shit out hand-grenades, and that was just the women… But everybody was always frightened of my Uncle Teardrop. And 'cause of him, they learned to mind me, too… People like us – we survive on pure tenacity."

Daryl glanced up the hill to the camp. "And them?"

"I guess they'll learn, or they'll die, right?" she said softly. Daryl sighed heavily, and they traipsed up the hill. The two of them were cut from the same cloth; and while Collis could hunt as well as he could, her mama had always kept a vegetable-garden. The others had laughed at her, at first, but let her teach the kids to turn plastic tubs and empty milk jugs with holes in them and trash-bags and closet shoe-organisers into planters, sowing seeds for carrots, different kinds of herbs, beans, blueberries, sweet-potatoes, beets, quinoa, bell-peppers, blackberries, chard, butternut-squash, spinach – now, they were overflowing with zucchinis, and poached rhubarb was a treat on top of their oatmeal in the mornings. She was proud of her tomatoes, was glad they had survived the onslaught of walkers. But then, the dead hadn't come back for her veggies.

"Good thing this wasn't ruined," Daryl said, as he carefully helped water all her plants. The dusty black trash-bags started to glisten as he watered the potatoes. "These'll keep us alive come winter."

"Have you ever eaten a vegetable in your life, Daryl?" she teased.

"Ate some berries, when I was lost in the woods when I was a kid," Daryl shrugged, grinning. "Wouldn't know the first thing 'bout growin' 'em though."

"Could barely afford Crisco when I was growin' up. We kept chickens, sold honey, mushrooms, saved seeds. Mama always had a vegetable-garden. When she…slipped away, I kept it up. That and the squirrels, deer meat from Teardrop…kept us goin'," Collis said. "There was always somethin'…_calm_ about it. It was…hope. Waitin', nurturing, knowin' no matter how bleak things were, there was always somethin' coming that would…save us… When I saw the primroses, I knew it was time to start sewin' seeds." She sighed, emptying the bucket, caught Daryl's eye and hid a blush. Everyone else had shared their stories over the campfire each night; but she didn't like to. Only Daryl could appreciate her upbringing; and he wouldn't look down on her for it. The others belonged to a different world, the one she only saw on television, the one she had only ever dreamed of. Her stories were the stuff of their nightmares. "Guess this was my normal for too long; I've slipped back into it so easy. You and me – we're the ones gon' keep everybody alive."

"And Rick."

"And Rick, too, I guess," Collis agreed, shrugging. A strong man with a rigid but not unmoving code was of more value to them than belligerent survivalist-types like Shane. And she was ashamed to think it but she was too much of a realist not to appreciate that the women and their soft kids would be the first to hobble them. Daryl frowned at her, seeing more than people thought.

"'Sup?" he murmured, jerking his head toward the quarry, and she swung her bucket as she traipsed down to the water with him. It was early but there was no telling who was lying awake in their tent, and in close quarters with tensions rising like this it was best not to provoke unnecessary confrontations.

"I never had anybody carry me, my whole life…guess my patience is runnin' thin… Having a damn fish fry like it's Fourth of July, no watch… Shane talking about having no menfolk to protect the camp… If I'd waited for a man to look after me I'd've died of starvation when I was fourteen years old, my family too."

"Yeah, but, you're a force of nature," Daryl said softly, and Collis felt her cheeks flush, hiding a smile as Daryl caught her eye, glancing away quickly as he blushed. She filled her bucket at the water's edge, finding that blush delicious. "Guess they're gon' learn from your example. Gotta, right? Half our number gone; we've got kids, untrained women. They're all gonna have to step up, is all."

"Yeah," Collis agreed.

"So you're stayin'?"

"Might as well," Collis shrugged. "Know we could do a hell of a lot worse than them."

"Even with Shane?"

"I've got my eye on him," Collis admitted quietly. "One asshole was never enough to send me running. Especially not with kids involved."

"Why'd you bring 'em back, anyway?"

Collis glanced at Daryl, thinking it over. It was only yesterday but it felt like months. Scavenging in the city, the bloodbath back at camp. The others had forgotten what the world had turned into, and they had paid the price for their lack of vigilance. "Guess I respected their resilience," Collis said softly. "Figured they've made it this far, and in the city, too… The irony of bringin' 'em back to camp to find a bloodbath is not lost on me."

"Ain't our fault," Daryl shrugged. "Like you said – they had no _watch_."

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't've figured Amy was studyin' medicine," Daryl murmured, and Collis chuckled softly as she tended her plants meticulously, ensuring there were no bugs, taking care of them.

"Right? Mermaids and unicorns everywhere in her dorm, and she's got books on slicin' and dicin' people," she said.

"Weird she's so squeamish, and she's studying to be a doctor," Daryl shook his head.

"Well – she'll have to learn," Collis said. "'Specially if she's the only one with at least a little medical training."

"What about you?"

"What I know is just…trial an' error – couldn't ever afford a doctor when I was growin' up," Collis shrugged, and Daryl nodded in mutual understanding. "We were real into our herbal remedies – old-fashioned stuff passed through the generations. Might even show you a wicked scar where I had to cauterise a stab-wound with a knife."

"Where is it?"

"Well, that's why I said _might_ – I know how you blush," Collis said, smirking, and Daryl blushed obligingly, flicking his eyes over her with thinly-veiled curiosity. She smiled to herself; she enjoyed making Daryl blush more than she did anything else, recently, even more than reading. Flirting with Daryl, steadily going through her reading Bucket List, playing with the little ones, she had to find things that brought her joy, no matter how fleeting the moments were, even if it was simply knowing she had brought joy to someone else – she didn't risk her life going to the city because she wanted to; she'd never admit it to anyone but she liked the smiles on people's faces, the beaming grins of appreciation when she showed up with something unexpected. She knew she held their awe, had their respect, as much for getting back from the city alive as for bringing supplies to camp, but what she really liked was those smiles. She had hard-wired herself to fight, to survive, and to _provide_. A lack of appreciation had broken her heart before; now she knew she was actively seeking it out.

"Stab-wound, huh? Hunting accident?"

"Of sorts," Collis said grimly, and Daryl knew better than to ask for details.

"Good stew yesterday," he said, casually changing the subject.

"Yeah. Be great if we could start breedin' rabbits," Collis said thoughtfully. "I can grow mushrooms no trouble… Pot, too. Rabbit stew with mushrooms, wholegrain mustard and carrots, cooked low an' slow. Mmm."

"Everything come back to food with you?" Daryl murmured, his eyes glinting as he gave her a half-concealed smile.

"That. _Sex_," Collis shrugged, smiling at the way he startled, and blushed when he caught her eye. "I'm kiddin' – oh, sweet pea! Your blushes are just so damn gorgeous!"

She chuckled to herself, and he narrowed his eyes, digging his fingertips into her side, gently bumping his hip against hers to send her staggering off the path, water sloshing on her leg. He was the only person in camp she felt at ease with, she knew she could be exactly who she was and he wouldn't be at all alarmed. She laughed softly, Daryl smiled in that sweet, reluctant way he had, and they wandered back to the camp. T-Dog acknowledged them from the roof of the RV, and they set the buckets down by the fire, rekindling the ash, getting some water boiled for the morning ahead.

By the time the first tent-flap twitched, tired eyes squinting out into the already-unforgiving sun, the oatmeal was ready to be rationed out for breakfast, Daryl had hunted a decent dozen squirrels for lunch, yesterday's grubby clothes were scrubbed and wrung out on Carol's line, already steaming in the sun, and Collis had separated out her last haul from the city. After everything happened yesterday, she hadn't had time; but she'd mentioned to Andrea about getting lucky on the college campus, and Amy stumbled out of the RV, yawning, to find textbooks neatly stacked on the folding camping-table, a photograph of her family still in its frame, and, on top of a stack of novels, the tiny _Little Mermaid_ snow-globe glittering eye-wateringly in the sunshine.

They had missed her birthday, with all the macabre chores going on, cleaning up the camp. But Collis had found birthday balloons in one of the dorms; Daryl had rolled his eyes but helped her and T-Dog blow up a half-dozen of them. It was important to remember the little things. And Amy's favourite sweater, new hair-ties, a handful of unread novels, made all the difference. It was more than she had ever managed to give Ephraim or Bea, but back in those days she couldn't be so cavalier about taking what she wanted. Amy emerged from the RV, her new mermaid necklace glinting in the sunlight, and her jaw gaped as she saw the balloons, the photograph of her family, the glittering snow-globe, and the two unopened packets of _Hostess_ dark-chocolate raspberry cupcakes with a pink birthday-candle stuck in the top, waiting to be lit so they could all sing.

"Know it's a day late," Collis said, as she and Daryl finished their oatmeal, Noelle staggering half-asleep out of the tent, confused by where she was and the plants brushing her bare arms, but spotting Collis and making a beeline for her with a big grin. "Happy birthday, Amy."

"I… I can't believe this," Amy whispered, and she reached for the photograph of her family, hugging the frame to her chest, her eyes closed, emotion playing so clearly across her features. She beamed at Collis. "Thank you… Thank you."

"It's no trouble," Collis said softly, smiling hesitantly as Noelle reached her, latching on to her hand and yawning widely. They had gained extra weapons and the creative mechanic Freya out of her stop at the campus; she'd say that was a win. They had to take every win they could, no matter how small. And cupcakes on your birthday in the middle of an apocalypse; that was a big one.

They had to keep reminding themselves who they were.

* * *

The debate started after breakfast, as soon as the dishes were washed and Amy's birthday-balloons stashed inside Dale's Winnebago, the sun already hot and firing everyone's blood. The harshest words were traded by Rick and Shane, in the way that spoke of a long history. One wanted to head to the CDC and answers; the other wanted to head one-hundred miles towards Fort Benning.

Collis sat back, and listened, not at all surprised Shane was putting his faith in the idea of weapons over medicine. When a man like him was confronted with a difficult situation, he chose to shoot his way out rather than think. Rick was a thinker; his gun was his last resort. For Shane, guns were the first and only solution to every problem.

The argument went around and around. Collis noticed Daryl kept quiet, just observing the others. She saw Morales exchange looks with his wife, gently holding her hand, a look of understanding passing between them. She thought Jim and T-Dog would go wherever the rest did, they had no other ties; she knew Lori had sort of bonded with Carol, and without Ed in the picture it was just her and Sophia. Rick was a decent man and wouldn't leave them to fend for themselves; Rick was capable and strong, and Carol saw all of that. Collis was sure Carol looked at Rick and saw the father she had always wanted for Sophia. Dale agreed with Rick, that they had more chance of getting to the CDC than Fort Benning – not low on gas and supplies with only a handful of people trained with weapons, trained to survive, vulnerable because of their children, their soft women.

"You went to the city for guns, man," Shane said belligerently. "Half this camp dead on account of you leavin' us undefended."

"You're gonna start on that again?" Rick said, his voice calm and dangerous as the others averted their eyes.

"This camp was your responsibility," Collis said, speaking up quietly from Daryl's truck-bed. "The others died on account of their own stupidity. An' yours." It was harsh but needed saying; they couldn't rely on anything for safety.

"Fort Benning is our only chance–"

"It is not our only option. You only think that because you think superior fire-power solves everything," Collis said coolly. "Katrina hit New Orleans, you remember, everyone headed for the Superdome. They were overrun with refugees. No water, no sanitation, no law. Fights broke out, there was rape, worse – the very worst of human behaviour is triggered by terror and large groups. If Fort Benning is lost we may as well just head back into Atlanta and be done."

"You don't know it's fallen."

"This…this _thing_, whatever it is, it's just like tuberculosis, like plagues in old times; through close quarters it'll spread like wildfire," Collis said quietly. "It just takes one person to hide they've been bit and all hell breaks loose, things break down from the inside."

"What's your suggestion?" Rick asked, and it was an earnest request, not the way Shane would speak to her – challenging, belligerent, and deaf to her answer.

After talking with Daryl she had thought about what her own position was, on their next move. "The CDC's closest; it wouldn't hurt to take a look, see if there's anything we can do. It's not a refugee centre so fewer people would think to head there. A Government facility, especially that one, they'd have better security than just a Military presence, they needed it before the world ended, in case of terrorist attacks," she said, and Rick nodded slowly. "But if that doesn't play out, I'd suggest heading into the country, to high ground. Find someplace defensible. Winter'll be on us before we realise it; we can't be out in the elements with our asses hangin' out."

Rick nodded, seeing the sense in her thoughts. Collis was nothing if not sensible, and her life had been about keeping a roof over her family's heads and filling their bellies for longer than she could remember, her time in the Marines a reprieve. An escape from real-life, a hard-earned sabbatical – she was back now. Walkers or not, this had always been her life.

"Daryl? What's your take on all this?" Rick asked, and Daryl's hooded eyes lingered on Collis thoughtfully before he spoke. Collis knew he wasn't used to having his honest thoughts asked about.

"Woods always kept me alive 'til now," he shrugged, the crossbow strapped to his back clanking softly. "I wouldn't trust Fort Benning's fared any better'n Atlanta. I say CDC, then like Collis said; find a place to wait out the winter, where we can hunt."

Shane scoffed somewhere, and a tiny frown of irritation appeared between Rick's eyebrows.

"Morales, what about you?"

"We're, uh…we're not going," Morales said, exchanging a look with his wife.

"We have family in Birmingham," Mrs Morales said softly, almost apologetic. "We want to be with our people."

"You're on your own, you won't have anyone to watch your back," Shane said, and Collis lifted an eyebrow, exchanging a simmering look with Daryl. She didn't trust Shane to have her back, or anyone's. He'd proven time and again he could not be relied upon. She had known too many men like him. Belligerent, egotistical and dangerous. Morales and his wife and kids might be better off without his presence; they at least had the numbers and a few good people with enough backbone to stand up to him.

"We'll take the chance," Morales said. "I gotta do what's best for _my_ family."

"You sure?" Rick asked; but the look he exchanged with Morales, he knew there was no convincing him, and Rick wouldn't try. His family, his call. It was decided. And there was another ner

"We talked about it," Morales nodded. "We're sure."

"Shane?" Rick said, and his partner nodded, reaching for the gun-bag. "0.357?"

"Yeah." Rick handed Morales a revolver on the flat of his palm, which Morales took with a solemn look, knowing exactly what was being offered, and what it took to give it. Collis had always taught Ephraim and Bea never to ask for what oughta be offered – Rick was the kind of man who would always offer.

Shane straightened up from the gun-bag with a small red cardboard box. "Box is half-full," he said, and Daryl sucked his teeth as the ammo was handed over.

"What makes you think our odds are any better?" Shane asked, in typical Shane fashion.

"That attitude ain't gonna help any," Collis said, quietly enough that Shane heard, and Rick, but no-one else.

Few people had genuine respect for Shane, Collis least of all. And comparing him to his recently-arrived and partner Rick…well, there was no comparison. Rick was sharp, compassionate, a natural leader – and a _thinker_. Shane was a talker; he had an opinion on everything but rarely acted on anything. He was too cowardly to make the truly hard decisions, the ones that put his own safety at risk. He couldn't be relied on to have their backs; he had already proven that, refusing to send backup to the city the day Rick rode into Atlanta.

Rick had risked his life for strangers; Shane wouldn't put his neck on the line for his friends. That told Collis all she needed to know about what kind of a friend Shane was to them. And the man Rick was in spite of the end of the world.

It wasn't in her nature to trust men to be reliable; but she'd put a sceptical dose of her dwindling faith in Rick Grimes.

* * *

**A.N.**: I've re-watched _Winter's Bone_ with Jennifer Lawrence again, a huge influence on Collis' character and backstory – I've also been influenced by Lagertha on _Vikings_, she is an amazing character – strong, feminine and ferocious.


End file.
